


Jailbait

by Sonora



Series: Love Bites 'verse [10]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Succubi & Incubi, Angst, Brother Feels, Family Secrets, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Mpreg, Prison, Prison Sex, Scott Hansen is not a rapist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-08 14:23:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4308513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sonora/pseuds/Sonora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yancy's cellmate in prison turns out to be none other than Scott Hansen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Prison isn’t so bad.

It’s not like _Oz_ , or anything like that. Even if Yancy could use a little _Oz_ in his life right now - what can he say, he wouldn’t mind pushing up against some gorgeous psychopath like Chris. The place is run by the DoD, and it’s pretty calm because of that, the salt-swept concrete walls holding in a whole host of broken dreams Yancy can taste in his teeth as he’s being loaded off the transport van. He squints up at the blank facade and holds himself back from his brother’s gentle questions, probing sleepily through the drift, searching for purchase. He has plenty of practice locking Rals out of his thoughts; it's for the kid's own good, that Yancy does it again now.

Intake’s a pretty easy process, no drama, a couple of the guards even telling him thanks for Yamarashi or Clawhook. Everyone knows who he is, and everyone assumes he’s passing through. And, during Yancy’s first meeting with the Commandant - mandatory, evidently, for somebody of his stature - he picked up on some interesting kinks that he is going to have to explore later. Variety’s always good, right?

The military’s not so different than prison, in a lot of ways, and even broken, most guys are holding on to their discipline. That’s pretty obvious too. It’s not a bad thing. None of this is bad.

Yancy gets a different kind of attention from the other inmates than he got from the guard, though. Not that it’s unwelcome, by any means. Yancy finds himself at dinner that night, chatting with one of the cute little bottom boys who’s brave enough to approach him. It’s nice to have his supper come to him, and he throws a glamor up around them, so everyone else thinks he’s eating while he slowly jacks the kid off under the table and forks his dinner over onto the kid’s tray. He’s a blond too, that boy, but Yancy’s always liked blonds.

He absolutely does not let his brother in through the drift.

Prison’s not that bad. That’s what he needs Raleigh to understand.

And Daddy’s going to lose his goddamn mind when he finds out who Yancy’s bunking with, so that can wait a few days.

Scott Hansen. Or at least, Scott Hansen’s cell. The Commandant told him it was less trouble keeping his two jaeger pilots in one space, but the place doesn’t smell like anything other than Hansen; nobody else lives here. 

“Where is he right now?” he asks the guard, when he’s shown to the blank space at the end of the cell block.

“Solitary. Don’t worry, you two can make friends tomorrow when he’s out.”

“What’s he in here for, anyway?”

The guard doesn’t tell him. Scott Hansen is _persona non grata_ around the PPDC, and Yancy figures that’s probably true here too. Daddy wouldn’t tell him what Scott did - it did come up in conversation, the entire jaeger corps knows the younger Hansen brother is serving a ten-year confinement - and Chuck says he hasn’t seen it in the drift. Yancy knows all the rumors, but none of the truth, and he’s almost looking forward to getting a glimpse of it during an orgasm or three. 

Maybe Scott will taste like Daddy does.

Which would be nice. 

Because there’s no Raleigh here. No Raleigh, no Chuck. No... no Daddy. They hardly had any time together. Just a few days with that bright hot furnace of Daddy’s heart, warming him up, and that was it. That was all.

Yancy knows he shouldn’t do it, but he can’t help himself. He cuddles into Scott’s bunk the first night he’s there, his itchy new prison grays tossed on the bottom bunk he should be sleeping in, pillow hugged to his chest. The sheets smell like the absolute best combination of Daddy and Chuck, and Yancy absolutely does not cry, not one little bit, over how much he misses them.

Because that’s when it’s not okay. At night. When he should have Raleigh in his arms and Daddy inside of him.

He wishes he could jack himself off. Yancy hasn’t wanted to masturbate in, well, he’s never wanted to masturbate, but he wants to masturbate right now. It’d be so great, covering the sheets in his cum and letting Scott come back and sleep in it and get used to his scent. It’d be even better, if he could seduce the man; not just whammie him and take what he needs every night, but really get Scott wanting him.

Normally, Yancy would feel like a bit of a predator, thinking like that. He doesn’t normally go _hunting_. But he has heard the rumors about Scott Hansen; the nicest start with kiddie rape, and just get worse from there. And Daddy did rip out of the harness in the middle of a fight and beat Scott half to death over it, so it has to be bad.

Scott will enjoy it, no matter how Yancy handles it, right? Probably more than the bastard deserves.

But damn, if his bed doesn’t smell good.

Yancy makes sure to get up before reveille that first morning, makes Scott’s bunk, messes up his own, so that’s the one the guards will see him pulling together.

He’s really hungry, though. So when the guard does come by, Yancy doesn’t even let him finish his taunt. Just slams the guy with a mental command, rendering him rock hard in seconds, and pulls him up against the bars. Yancy’s done this before - this is the second time in his life he’s been locked up with a group of humans he doesn’t particularly want to be with, after all - and he’s got the guard coming down his throat in thirty seconds flat.

It’s weaker than Yancy would prefer, not as full or as rich as Daddy’s orgasms are, but then, those are tinged with love, so what was he expecting?

Still, it’s not like that was hard.

Raleigh’s thoughts reach back out to him, bright green concern wrapping sleepily around him; he’s half-lost to dreams right now, mind pushing out, seeking the comfort of his big brother. Yancy’s relieved to feel it. He was a little worried that Raleigh wouldn’t want him, would reject him, if he ever found out the truth about Richard. If he knew how much Yancy has been hiding. And then, when it all came out so terribly, they hadn’t had hardly any time to talk about it. It’s good to know Raleigh still loves him enough to reach for him.

Yancy lets the guard go, and gives Raleigh a quick mental hug.

Then it’s off to go fake-eat the slop the kitchen turns out for breakfast.

+++++

Scott’s in the cell that night, the first interesting thing that’s happened over the course of this long, boring day. He is now, in the flesh. Scott Hansen. Bad boy of the jaeger program glory days. Daddy’s little brother. Doing push-ups on the floor, face towards the wall.

He doesn’t look anything like the man Yancy remembers from that speech at Jaeger Academy, much less his late night talk show appearances. 

He looks... 

Well. Yancy puts his thoughts about fucking the guy out of his mind.

Scott’s haggard. Rail thin, gray skin drawn tight over wasted muscle, every rib clearly showing, the circuitry scars that mar his entire left side a livid red. The dark ink of Lucky Seven’s wings, spread a good twelve inches across his shoulder blades, seems tired. He doesn’t smell right either, the sour tang of cheap soap barely concealing whatever that is, and Yancy’s almost got it identified, almost has that odd thing nailed down, when Scott stops, sits down, faces him.

“They told I was getting a cellmate. Didn’t tell me who.” He reaches for his shirt, hanging off the back of their bunk. “So the fuck did you do?”

He and Daddy were never identical twins - leaner in the waist, broader through the shoulders, features more Teutonic than Daddy’s and hair the same shade of red as Chuck’s - but right now, there’s something very Herc-like about him. Yancy can’t really put his finger on it. The suspicion, maybe. Or the scruff. He’s sporting a full beard across his gaunt cheekbones. “What do you mean?”

“Mate, I’ve been in solitary for the past thirty days. I don’t know what the fuck’s been going on.”

Yancy balks a little, pulling his feet up under him on the thin pad of his lower bunk. “I, umm, Rals and I went after a civilian fishing boat.” 

Scott gives him an incredulous look, but makes no effort to get off the floor. In fact, he fishes a small package out from under the sink. Taps out a cigarette and extracts a lighter from it. “Not followin’, mate.”

“We took Gipsy out after a boat instead of...”

“Gipsy Danger,” Scott interrupts, halfway to lighting his cigarette. “You’re talking about Gipsy Danger. That seppo Mark Three.”

“Yeah.” Yancy frowns; it hadn’t occurred to him that Scott wouldn’t know who he was. And that hurts more than it should. They’re family now, after all.

“You’re the older one, aren’t you? Becket, eh?” Scott nods, and flicks his lighter awake, shielding the flame with his hand.

“Do they let you do shit like that? Smoke?”

“Mate, we’re jaeger pilots. Even in here, we can do whatever the fuck we want. Except keep a private cell, apparently.” The flame goes out, and Scott takes a deep drag on the cigarette, smoke leaking from the corners of his mouth before he blows it all out. “So, you fucked an op?”

“My brother passed out. I had to finish the fight alone. Killed the fucker, but the kaijuu fucked up our girl.”

“Sounds familiar,” Scott grunts, and then cocks his head. “No brain damage?”

Yancy shrugs. “Well enough to be court-martialed.”

“Pentecost always was a dick.” Scott says it like Yancy’s agreement is a foregone conclusion. “So they got that hapless puppy brother of yours in another cell?”

“No. He’s,” and Yancy hesitates. He’s not sure how much he should say about this, even if Scott is going to be an uncle again. “It’s just me here.”

“Bully for me,” Scott grunts, and, stashing his smoking paraphernalia back under the sink, climbs up into his bunk and doesn’t say another word.

It’s so predictable, that Hansen silence.

Yancy makes a mental note to make sure he eats before lights-out from now on, and tries to ignore the hunger under his skin. Tries to wrap himself up in happier things. He can almost hear Raleigh laughing; Daddy’s got him pinned to the wall in the shower, the two of them lazily kissing. It’s a nice thing to drift off to sleep to.

Except he doesn’t get to stay asleep. Right about the time he feels Raleigh’s hands slide into Chuck’s wet hair, Yancy’s ghost drift is broken by the sound of whimpering in the top bunk. He lays there for a little while, hoping that it’ll stop and he can go back to his nice dreams about his family. 

But it doesn’t stop. The little noises start forming into words, like

“... _Herc_...”

and Yancy can’t ignore it any longer.

With a sigh, he hauls himself out of his own bed and up into Scott’s, extending a tendril of calm as he goes, careful as he can. Scott jerks a little as Yancy settles in next to him, but doesn’t seem to wake. No, instead, the human turns into him, nose to shoulder, curling into him like a scared child. 

“Herc,” Scott whispers again, and digs his fingers into Yancy’s shoulders. “No, Herc.” 

If there’s one thing Yancy understands, it’s little brothers. And Scott’s what, five, six years younger than Daddy? Even though Scott deserved it, he still probably misses Daddy. Fuck knows Yancy misses Daddy, and Scott’s been here over six months, not two days. 

Besides, Scott really does smell like Daddy and Chuck. 

Feels good, being able to cuddle something a little more solid than a pillow. 

Yancy still wants to know what the hell Scott did, though.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I updated the tags, because I realized there's a lot of talk about uncomfortable things here (but I do promise, Scott is not a rapist).

“So, you were right. They did have it in French.”

“Awesome. The whole thing?”

“Well, Herc’s testimony is still sealed.”

“I thought you had access to everything,” Yancy replies, leafing through the thick folder, forcing himself to stay casual about it. There’s still a lot of black in this, redacted shit.

“Almost everything, darlin’,” comes the answer, but Tendo still sighs, his cheery smile faltering. “I checked the UN’s English-language report. Herc invoked some kind of regulation about, umm, victims’ privacy rights in sexual assault reporting.”

Yancy glances over at Major Heller, who’s slumped over the end of the bare metal table in the bare legal counsel room with Yancy’s tail still firmly pumping his rock-hard erection, fast asleep, off in some erotic dream. Yancy feels kind of bad about it. Heller is working overtime on this case, after all; the Air Force has evidently decided that they’re not going to let the UN destroy two of their own _like the pack of bastards they are_. At least, that’s what Major Heller said today. Or maybe it’s just Heller being cool, and he’s pushing for an acquittal on his own. Or maybe one of the many, many generals here in PACOM who hate Marshall Pentecost see this as an opportunity to get one over on their English rival.

Whatever. Regardless of the politics involved - because Yancy could give two shits about the politics - Heller’s an ally and yeah, Yancy respects him for that. 

But he did ask Tendo to come along today for a reason. Tendo took the day off and everything for it, and Yancy knows how much Tendo hates leaving LOCCENT. He owes his friend a case of coffee and good fuck for getting him this. All the information the PPDC has on Scott Hansen’s dismissal and incarceration.

And this is a conversation that needs to be private. Just them. And it’s not like Yancy can do his hypnosis thing without sex being involved, right?

Plus, Major Heller does have a very nice cock. Yancy will have to thank him properly later.

Tendo’s here right now, though, which means no hanky-panky. To distract himself, Yancy flips through court martial transcripts a little more purposefully. The French is coming a little slower than English would, his eyes scanning for anything that might indicate Daddy’s testimony. Yancy was balls-deep in Daddy’s memories, back in Manila, and didn’t see a single hint of anything indicating anything like... well, like _that_. And as fucked up as Scott is, Yancy seriously doubts...

He doesn’t even want to think about it.

“So we know rape was involved?”

“Seems so.”

“Da- Herc, he, umm, can he do that on behalf of another person? Legally, I mean?”

Tendo smiles a little at the near-slip. “We could wake your ADC buddy up there, ask him.”

“The Aussies ran those reviews. Major Heller probably wouldn’t know,” Yancy grumbles, and pushes the report away, trying to think. “This just doesn’t make any sense.”

Tendo lays a hand over his. He’s starting to get a little antsy himself, the scent of Major Heller’s arousal thickening in the air, and Yancy knows they’re going to have to stop soon. Even the most well-meaning satyrs can loose all control when sex is involved. “What’s up, brother? You ask me to pull all this, lie to the major, get invited along today...”

“I’m bunking down with Scott. Just trying to understand what his deal is.”

Tendo eyes him. He’s a little flushed, his horns just starting to curl out beneath his impeccably coiffed hair, but he can still summon an questioning lift of an eyebrow. “Dude, Yancy, I love you, you know that, but there is nothing to figure out with Scott Hansen. He’s an asshole.”

Yancy pulls his own tail back, getting up to zip Major Heller’s uniform pants back up. Last thing this prison needs is a satyr on a rampage, and Tendo would never forgive himself if he hurt somebody. Even if it would be entertaining as all hell. 

“Yeah, believe me, a week with the guy? I know.” He gives Major Heller a kiss, because he really is grateful to the human officer, and then tugs Tendo up for another. It’s gentle, nothing heated or suggestive in it at all, just a chaste press of lips, Yancy leeching out as much of Tendo’s arousal as he can. His thumbs slowly press his friend’s horns back in, fingers rubbing down the elongating sideburns. 

“Thanks for bringing me this,” he murmurs.

Tendo smiles at him again and lays his arms around Yancy’s shoulders. That rosary dangles down against his back. “Sure we can’t have a quickie? You and me? You could just make Heller forget, couldn’t you?”

“I could, but you want to take that chance? You cum in buckets, brother. It’d probably splash all over the place and straight onto him.” Yancy brushes his cheek. “And I thought you said you were doin’ okay? That thing with Allison working out?”

“Yeah. Local girl, Hawaiian water spirit. You should see her down in the ocean. Gorgeous. When you get out of here, we’ll have to show you her favorite skinny dipping spot. Or, umm," and Tendo grins, "you could always come to one of my support group meetings. No girls allowed.”

“Right, like I’m going to let you talk me into another satyr orgy.”

“You loved it last time.”

Yancy punches him lightly, and sits back down with his lawyer, who’s gradually waking up. “I’ve got the family to think of right now. The baby, all that.” 

Tendo grins wider, the last vestiges of his wilder nature vanished from his face now. “So Rals really is pregnant, huh? That is so wild. You should name the little guy after me.”

Major Heller makes sort of a snorting noise, jerking awake, and that’s the end of that.

+++++

Yancy’s not real sure what he himself should be doing with his days.

This place isn’t a supermax. It’s not like they’re locked down for twenty-three hours a day. In fact, beyond reveille, meals, taps, there isn’t much of a schedule at all. The guys who are here long-term have jobs, of course, working in the kitchen or on keeping up the grounds, things like that. But Yancy’s on hold until the court martial begins, and the Commandant seems a little afraid of pissing off his captive jaeger pilot by forcing him to do manual labor. All that together means Yancy has a very open day. He hasn’t had this much free time since high school. And even then, he still had homework, and a teenager’s appetite, and a father that wouldn’t feed him.

Yancy hates the inactivity. It leaves him too much time worry about things.

Things like what’s wrong with Scott Hansen.

Because there is definitely something wrong with Scott Hansen.

Very wrong. And since Scott is far more immediate a problem than the court martial, Yancy gives the issue more thought than maybe he should.

Over the past week, Yancy’s gotten a chance to do some quality observation of the man. Everybody gives him a wide berth. According to a former lieutenant who’s here for stealing medical supplies, a couple people tried to give Scott hell when he first got here.

“What happened?”

“What do you mean, what happened? Three guys tried to jump him...”

“Jump? Like, umm...”

“Come on, he raped his nephew, or haven’t you heard? Poor kid. Anyway, yeah, a couple guys here wanted to show him exactly what they thought about that kind of behavior, down in the showers first night he was here, and he ended up putting all three of them in the infirmary for months. Damn near killed one of them. It’s that Kwoon thing they train y’all in. Nobody’s gonna fuck with that.”

Yancy is sure Scott didn’t rape Chuck. Daddy wouldn’t have stopped until Scott was a smear on the conn-pod wall if that had been the case. It shouldn’t be as comforting a thought as it is. But that rumor does seem to be the predominant one around here.

Guys leave Scott alone. But that means they leave him _alone_.

Scott smokes alone, works out alone, reads in the library alone. Whatever table he takes in the chow hall stays empty but for him, and he eats his food like he’s suspicious of it. On the rare occasion when somebody does get physically close to him by accident, he pulls away, moves tables or goes to the other end of the yard. He barely talks to Yancy at night, that first evening seemingly enough to establish everything that Scott wanted to know about him, but he talks in his sleep. Mostly just saying Daddy’s name, over and over. He also lets himself be held when he’s asleep, the way he tucks himself into Yancy’s arms oddly reminiscent of Raleigh. Like his dreams are the only place left where he can be a little brother. 

It’d be sadder, if he didn’t call Yancy the _cunt who’s squatting in m’ goddamn cell_ a couple of days ago.

But even that seemed overly defensive. Scott doesn’t like being around other people, but there’s something about Yancy’s presence that seems to make him downright uncomfortable.

Fuck him, Yancy tries to tell himself. Scott had to have raped somebody. Fuck that.

Only reason he cuddles him at night is because it reminds him of Daddy. Even if Daddy would never, ever, do something so horrible.

Regulations allow Yancy to keep materials that pertain to his court case, and he’s able to play off the French-language file as just another official UN document in his growing stack of things. He waits until he’s back in his cells for the night, an hour before lights out, to start really going through it, and he’s glad he does. There’s a letter taped to the inside front of the folder; in French, from Raleigh.

_Hey brother, Tendo said he was visiting and offered to carry this email for me. I can’t leave the ‘Dome but Chuck knows a great place on the roof where you can see the whole city. You’ll love the skyline, it’s so beautiful, like flowers blooming in the night. Daddy had them widen our quarters and we have enough room for all of us in our sleeping nest, but what I’d really like is a house some day. One with a big yard, so our boy can play outside. Daddy is going to take such good care of him, you’ll see. It won’t be like what it was for us. This is where we belong, with him, and I can’t wait for you to come home to us._

_PS, could you please open your dreams back up to me? It’s hot in Australia but I feel cold without you._

Yancy reads it twice, smiling faintly; Raleigh can’t string two sentences together in English, but his French can be downright ridiculous at times. This is something they hid from the PPDC, the fact that they both speak their mother’s birth language fluently, keeping it something that’s just theirs. He knows Raleigh is using it here out of necessity, but it feels more intimate than English would.

A corner of the tape hlding the letter to the folder is peeling up, and when Yancy picks at it, he realizes there’s something else under the paper. Curious, he peels it off, revealing a thin envelop with a few photos inside and a note on the outside in Tendo’s handwriting.

_You lucky motherfucker._

The photos are nudes. Printed out on regular paper, they must have been attached to whatever email Raleigh sent Tendo. His brothers, their daddy, but it’s the last one Yancy lingers on, a candid shot of Daddy and Raleigh together, something Chuck probably snapped on his cell phone. They’re stretched out in bed, legs tangled, kissing. Naked, of course. Daddy’s hands are wound in Raleigh’s hair. Raleigh looks so happy, arched into into those tattooed arms. 

“Pretty boy,” Yancy murmurs, sitting back against the leg of his bunk, butt on the ground, the rest of his files spread out around him. “Wish I was there with you too.” His finger traces Raleigh’s image.

Just before it’s snatched from his hand.

“So this is puppy Becket,” Scott say above him, squinting at the picture. The human is barefoot, his flimsy prison sneakers dangling between his left fingers. That’s one of the other things about him that Yancy’s noticed, that he’ll just take random articles of clothing off at random times, for no real reason. Not that it bothers Yancy. He’s not too fond of clothes himself, after all, and Scott is a good-looking man. “With... is this my brother?”

Yancy’s not sure is that’s shock or disapproval he hears, but he doesn’t care. This is the first time Scott’s spoken to him in almost three days - the cunt remark the only other thing since that first night - and this is what comes out? Hurt, the incubus reaches up to snatch the photo back. “Keep your goddamn hands to yourself. I don’t steal your shit.”

Scott jerks it up and away, pacing off across the narrow cell. “No, this is Herc. The hell is... Herc is not... are you fucking him too?”

“How can I be fucking him? I’m locked in a cell with his asshole criminal younger brother.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Scott grumbles. His eyes haven’t left the photo. “The fuck, Becket? Seriously, the fuck?”

With a sigh, Yancy pushes himself off the floor and pads over, snatching it back, resisting the urge to hit Scott in the process. “We’re not the only pilot team that fucks,” Yancy growls. There’s a little crease at the top of the photo where Scott’s fingers pressed too hard. It shouldn’t be as upsetting as it is. “So drop it, okay?”

Scott’s expression is a little glazed, but he shakes himself at those words. Just gives Yancy a look - a very odd look - and then goes back over to his bunk, grabbing a cigarette and his lighter on the way. Yancy glares at him, his anger rising. But Scott doesn’t do anything. Just climbs in and lights up, blowing smoke rings at the ceiling.

“What’s your problem?” Yancy demands, suddenly tired of the strained silence, reaching for something, anything, he can throw at the guy to get a reaction. “Seriously, man, what the fuck? Hell only knows what you did to be in here, and you’re going to give me shit for being gay?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Scott repeats and blows another smoke ring. “Herc just wanted me gone.”

“Bullshit.”

“I didn’t do what he told them I did!” It’s the first time Scott’s raised his voice with Yancy, above the grudging mutter, and he instantly retreats from it, pulling further back in his bunk. “I could give a shit who you’re fucking, Becket, but my brother’s not gay.”

Guilt flares in Yancy’s chest and he has to shove it down hard. Daddy told him, that night when Daddy fucked him so good he shifted without even thinking about it, that everything was okay. That he wanted it. Daddy wants to want them. Daddy’s what he wants to be now, and Yancy gave him that. 

“Maybe you don’t know him as well as you think you do.”

Scott actually turns over at that, up on his elbow, staring over at Yancy, and then flicks his cigarette into the room’s toilet. “Herc’s not gay,” Scott says again, and swings down out of his bunk, grabbing his towel and his shaving kit, heading out again.

Yancy watches him go, then pushes off the wall to flush the toilet. The half-smoked butt swirls down and away.

It occurs to Yancy he hasn’t showered yet today.

He still hasn’t fed off Scott, either.

So screw the file. He wants _answers_. Yancy strips his prison uniform off, winds his towel around his waist, and heads to the showers.

+++++

Scott’s already naked when Yancy gets to the shower room, palms on the mildewed tiles, shoulders arched up in a way that makes those wing tats seem almost alive.

But he’s not on his feet.

No. 

He’s on his knees.

One of the guards has him down there, rough hands dug into that messy red hair, hips thrusting hard down his throat - Yancy can almost see the outline of the guy’s cock there - just fucking Scott’s face. And the guard is talking real dirty, too, telling Scott _oh yeah, take it you sick little slut_ , and Yancy’s guts twist up.

Whatever he did, Scott’s family, isn’t he?

“Hey!’ the guard says, looking up, but Yancy doesn’t give him a chance to say another word. It might not be his doing, but the human is really aroused right now, that sick, transgressive, doing-evil-and-knowing-it arousal, and Yancy goes for it. Slams his will straight through all of that, right down to where sleep lives, and rips that cage wide open, launching it out into the guard’s mind with a nightmare riding on the back of it. 

The guard goes down like he was shot. 

Leaving Scott alone. 

Yancy reaches his cellmate’s side, just as Scott is pitching forward onto one hand, the other over his mouth, coughing into his fist. And Yancy wants to tell him everything’s going to okay, that he’s safe, but what he sees when he lifts Scott’s shoulders shocks him.

The man has fangs. And horns. And a whip-thin tail that’s sort of tucked into the crease of a lean thigh. It’s not right, it’s all not right somehow, cause his horns are dark and flaky, charred, almost, and his tail’s broken in half and...

Yancy looks down the curve of Scott’s back, and it’s the same story with his wings. Lifted clean up and through the tattoo, feathered with inky-burnt feathers that crumble the second Yancy tries to touch. Scott cringes, and Yancy pulls his hand back, sliding it instead through Scott’s hair, not sure what to think of the dark trails his fingertips leaves on the other’s skin.

“Oh man, why didn’t you tell me?” Yancy murmurs.

Scott closes his eyes. “Didn’t ask for your help, Becket.”

“No, I get it, it’s dick of me to interrupt while you’re eating, but...” he glances back down at the guard. “I’m sorry. Want me to leave, let you finish?”

“Jesus fucking Christ, yeah, I want you to leave, because that arsehole’s actually my boyfriend and we’re in love and this is the only way we get a free moment together,” Scott says sarcastically, and shoves him off, trying to stand up but only falling back on his ass against the wall. Yancy reaches out again, and Scott slaps him away, struggling to his feet, one hand helping to pull his body up on the mildewed tiles. More feather shake loose, falling like ash to the shower room floor, as he stumbles towards the sinks.

“Come on!” Yancy demands, following. “I get it, Scott, we have to do that to live...”

Scott laughs hoarsely, wings shaking, more feathers falling out. “You’ve been here for a week, Becket, how’d you get so cynical about this place?” He splashes water in his face. “Piss off.”

Yancy bites the inside of his cheek, trying to figure out what’s going on here. The scent of Scott’s skin makes a lot more sense now; like Daddy, but like Chuck too, an incubus like them. Their people have a very distinctive scent, at least, for supernaturally-charged senses. So shouldn’t Scott be able to smell him? 

But then, why couldn’t Yancy smell Scott?

And Scott’s been actually eating normal food, and he’s so thin, emaciated, and his wings look like somebody took a blowtorch to them, and...

And then Yancy sees it.

And then it makes sense.

Letting his own true nature come out, Yancy pads up behind Scott, careful as he can, not wanting to startle him. Scott startles a little as Yancy’s fingers find his left shoulder, sweeping across the drive suit scars to the space where his wings have lifted up, leaving an almost-blank expanse of freckles. It’s almost like the tattoo reshaped them, like his wings became the tattoo, or vice versa. Yancy’s never seen another incubus with feathered wings, but if Raleigh can have a pussy, why can’t Scott have this? Still, some heavy magic went into creating these, and Yancy can guess why.

Underneath the wings is another tattoo, an older tattoo.

_light of my life, my angel_

It’s in one of those cursive scripts, right across his shoulder. The kind of tattoos every girl and her mom was getting a decade ago, positioned in a place where the shading on the feathers probably hides it completely.

It’s a mating mark. 

Scott was mated. Is mated. And he's been locked up here, alone, for over half a year. Probably had to submerge as much of his incubus nature as possible in order to survive. Even at that, though, Yancy's amazed he's even still alive.

There’s no mirrors here, the glass probably some sort of safety hazard, so it’s nothing but more blank tiled wall that Scott’s staring at, water dripping down his cheeks. Yancy feels him sigh, though, at the sensation of having that tattoo stroked. “Go away,” Scott mumbles.

“No, not leaving you alone,” Yancy replies softly, and presses a kiss underneath the tattoo, letting his hands wander down to Scott’s hips, encircling him in a loose hug. Even with the drive suit scars, there’s a different texture to the skin around the edge of his belly. Little whisker stretch marks, Yancy sees as he turns Scott around and presses him back against the sink. But Scott just keeps cringing away. Which is strange, because what incubus doesn’t like being touched? “I don’t think you really want me go either, do you?”

Scott sighs again and looks him in the face, but his eyes widen almost immediately; his body stiffens; his mind, more distant than a human's would be, resonates with shock. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah, see?” Yancy says encouragingly, and strokes Scott’s cheek with his tail. “You don’t have to be afraid.”

“Like fuck, mate. Wh-what are you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's up with Tendo? Hee hee, that might have to be a separate story...
> 
> And a shout-out to Karmas-bitch for giving me the idea of what to do with Scott here. I'm running with the core of that, because it's made what I was originally thinking so much better. Thank you! :D


	3. Chapter 3

Becket is talking, soothing words that feel like knives in Scott’s gut, but it doesn’t make any sense, it doesn’t. What Becket is saying isn’t real, can’t be real, no way, no way anyone can have horns like this, wings, steel-blue bat wings rising up behind his shoulders, no, no, nonono...

“...you’re an incubus, Scott, like me, it’s okay, I understand,” Becket is saying, and he has fangs, little things that touch his lower lip as he talks. He won’t stop touching Scott’s face, and his hands are burning-hot. Or maybe that’s just Scott’s skin; he feels like he’s on fire. “Well, I don’t understand everything, but I know...”

_thudding music in the club no impediment to your senses, looking for just the right girl to bring home to the ‘Dome tonight, one Herc’ll like, one Herc will hopefully want to share..._

“You don’t know anything, mate,” Scott rasps, and tries to shove Becket off, but his hands won’t obey him. It’s taking all his energy just to stand up straight, and this thing, this thing that’s building under his skin... he feels like he’s going to explode. 

_Herc is hitting you, over and over, and there’s nothing you can do to tell him, explain to him, because you know you’re sick, you’ve always been sick, a monster in love. You know you’re in the wrong, you shouldn’t touch him, not with_ HER _gone now like she is but you burn without his touch and you always do it when he’s asleep, when he won’t remember, except you got careless today and you’re exhausted from eight hours of combat and the fucking drift flowed through you and brought those memories to him..._

_HOW LONG, Herc is yelling at you, HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN-_

“I do, come on, look at me. You know what I am.” Becket’s fingers slide up on his forehead, and holy shit, they’re going up at an angle they shouldn’t be able to, into the air, and he can still _feel_ them. “You’re like me, and you’re starving yourself to de-”

_Mum’s legs spread open on the bedspread and her hand held out, a smile on her face that shouldn’t be there in this situation, not for you, but you don’t care, because you’re hungry and it feels so goddamn good to..._

Scott’s legs give out, and his head bangs against the shitty old metal of the sink as his body collapses to the ground. He doesn’t fall all the way though, Becket’s hands holding him up, Becket’s voice still talking, but the words are gone now, faded behind the sound of his blood pounding in his ears, carrying that fire everywhere, everywhere.

_Dad rips you off the bed and screams at you, hits you, but you can barely understand what he’s saying because you still need it, you need it so bad. But the pain is overwhelming and Mum is screaming at you or him or both of you and you finally hit him back, hit him and run for your bedroom and then the front door and you don’t stop running until you reach the bus station. The woman behind the counter lets you use the phone and you ring your brother’s cell, hoping like hell he’s not on deployment right now but he must be because he doesn’t answer..._

“Scott? Fuck, Scott, come on, talk to me...”

_You’ve been at the boys’ shelter in Sydney for three weeks - fourteen and you’re homeless - before you finally get the call back, and it’s Herc, it’s finally Herc, and he is gutted when you tell him Dad kicked me out and you try not to cry. He says he’ll be back in a week and to start looking at apartment ads because you can live with me, Scott, I’ll get out of the damn barracks and you can live with me..._

_You don’t know why you need it but you do, and Herc makes it too easy to take it, your wonderful brother who can only afford an efficiency apartment on his salary but doesn’t care that it means he has to share a bed with you. And it makes you feel like a predator so you wait until the need builds to a point where you can’t ignore it anymore. That makes it okay, doesn’t it, to wait until your brother falls asleep and you can slot between his legs, savoring the feel of his skin against yours and... and you love him, you’re in love with it, the best and worst thing you’ve ever felt in your life, you love him..._

_You check yourself in front of the mirror again, combing your hair out and frowning at the color. You know from his dreams, the dreams you’ve been somehow watching for three years now, that your brother like strawberry blondes but your hair won’t change from your own dark auburn, but you hope he’ll like this face more than the others. Older, too, closer to his age of twenty-two. She looks about twenty, even though you’re only seventeen. You’ve made her as boyish as you dare, a secret hope that maybe, someday, Herc will want you too._

“Scott, you need to focus. You’re going to rabbit, or something, and I can’t bring you out of this if you get too far lost in...”

_What do I call you, Herc asks you afterwards, when you’re sharing a cigarette with him in a bed that smells like your male body and you bite back all the regrets for the things you can’t have. Angela, you decide your name can be, because he called you that earlier when he came for the second time, pretty angel girl..._

_Taking him by the hand, you pull him away from his silent contemplation of his cell phone and into your arms. I don’t know why he hasn’t called me, Herc tells you, the words muffled in your shoulder, it’s been two weeks and he hasn’t called. Don’t know why the fuck he does this to me, keeps running off... So you’ll call him later with your male voice, tell him you wanted to see a bit of the country after high school graduation and to not worry about you, cause there’s a great new sheila in your life, ain’t there Herc? He tells you you’ll always be his brother and there’s always a place for you in his life, except there’s not, not like how you want. You wipe your face in the coffee shop a block away from the apartment where you still live with him, as Angela, and you tell him you know. But he doesn’t love you the way you wish he would..._

_It’s hard to think of yourself as male or female anymore, because when he’s on deployment you don’t bother keeping Angela’s body any other time than when you have to go to her classes for her nursing degree - and you weren’t going to finish school but Herc insisted you finish out high school and Herc likes his women smart so Angela needed to be a college girl and not some bar slut. You aren’t her, not really. But Angela is real for Herc in a way that Scott isn’t, Scott just the fuck-up little brother who can’t keep a job and can’t stay in one place. You wish you could live that life sometimes, wandering, doing what you please, sleeping with anybody you come across, but it’s Herc for you, it’s always been Herc..._

_You’re such a slut, Herc says and you giggle, kiss his cheek, your slut you tell him and you’re laying in sunlight in the mountains together and you love him..._

“Come on, pull it back, Scott, you’re going to seriously hurt yourself, stop, I’m sorry...”

_Your belly is swelling and one of your teachers gave you a big enthusiastic hug after class a few nights ago and asked you when you were due. You had no idea you could get pregnant and you’re so scared, it’s so scary. You hug your belly to hug what’s growing inside and you pray that the little sprog will forgive you for another night of going out to clubs, because Herc is on deployment and you NEED all the time and it hurts and sex makes it better and you still don’t understand why..._

_Herc kisses your sweaty forehead and whispers to you in awe, look what we made together, angel. You reach for him, your perfect little son, and Herc kisses you again, heading out to the hall with his cell phone in his hand. Your blood goes cold, because you know he’s going to come back in and sigh and say Scott didn’t pick up, Scott hasn’t been here at all during your pregnancy, it’s like he doesn’t even give a shit that he’s an uncle now. Nothing, nothing could be further from the truth. Charles, Charlie, your son, he’s your entire life..._

_You couldn’t shift while Charlie was breast-feeding but you needed Charlie to know you, needed him to see his uncle, so you gave that up closeness with your baby to be here with your nephew now, and it’s so worth it. The first thing you feel is Herc’s love, relief, washing over you in a warm wave as the door opens. You drop your duffel on the step and Herc laughs, pulling you into an uncharacteristic hug, it’s good to see you Scotty, it’s been too long, you’ve missed so much with Charlie, he’s getting so big... Yeah I know, sprog’s three years old but I’m here now... You can stay with us... Naw, mate, I’ll get my own place..._

_Your heart falls, every time you hug your son and he calls you Uncle instead of Mummy, but it’s worth it. You’d do anything for him..._

“Scott, it’s okay, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean... it’s okay.”

Scott knows he’s crying. He’s crying, and he can’t stop it. He has no idea what this is, what all these flashes are, creeping into the blank spots in his brain. Brain damage, the doctors told him he has severe brain damage from Herc breaking the drift in Lucky, their last battle together. Herc ripped out of the drift, taking parts of Scott’s memory with him. That’s what they told him. That’s the reason for all the emptiness he’s lived with since then. This... this shouldn’t be. 

This shouldn’t be here.

It doesn’t make any sense.

“What are you doing?” he pleads, palms grinding into his eyes. “Stop... stop it...”

“Scott, I don’t know. I didn’t... I didn’t realize just asking would break the magic, I’m...”

_Charlie is such a cute little boy, so perfect, you're so proud of him as he buckles himself into the front seat of the car, frowning at you though, where’s Mum wasn’t she supposed to pick me up today, and it’s selfish, you know you’re being fucking selfish when you tell him, your mum ha to work late, guess you’re stuck with your lame old Uncle Scott..._

Scott doesn’t know why, but Becket is somehow the only solid thing in the world right now, and he clings to him. Becket’s arms hug him tight, the embrace taking some of the heat out of his body.

Until a hand brushes up his left shoulder.

_...the feel of a needle in your skin and Herc is smiling at you, holding your hand. Back from his last deployment three weeks, and you don’t know why, but you needed to do this. Told him you wanted a tattoo, like all of his, and asked him to pick something out for you. You have a wedding ring on your finger, something Herc slipped onto it at the court house over a decade ago, but this, this settles you in a way you’ve never known before. Now, you feel a part of him, you feel whole..._

And then Scott knows.

He knows what this is.

+++++

“Honey, the kaijuu’s headed straight for Sydney, they’re predicting landfall in an hour. There’s a B-1 in route, and they’re... they’re going to nuke the thing. I’m coming to get you, get up to the helipad on the roof and stay there, I’m coming.”

The call makes your blood run cold, because you aren’t at the hospital. Angela’s shift doesn’t start until noon today, but you lied and told Herc it was an early, a double, so Scott could be the one to take Charlie to school and help out with sports day they’re having. You’re setting up the football field, actually, little orange cones in your hand as you calmly tell Herc, in Angela’s voice, that his world is ending. 

“Herc, listen to me, you don’t have time to come to the hospital and make the school too. You can’t do it. You have to get Charlie first. Promise me you’re going to get Charlie. I won’t get on whatever it is you’re stealing if our son isn’t on it.”

“Angela, they’re going to nuke this thing...”

“I know, darling, I heard you.” You feel so much calmer than you should.

“I can’t leave you to that. I don’t know how to live without you.”

It’s by far the single most emotional thing you’ve ever heard your brother say, and you’ve never been closer to telling him, in that moment, that you’re a monster that needs sex like air, that can shift forms and manipulate thoughts, who’s been living as a woman for the past twelve years... but that would mean Angela has been a lie. Angela dying will break Herc’s heart, but Angela not existing will destroy him, and Charlie needs his daddy.

And maybe there’s a bit of selfishness in it too. Like maybe, if Angela is gone, they - Scott and Herc - can be. Somehow. Like they were before, brothers as close as brothers can be. So you say it.

“Go get our son, Hercules. Scott’s at the school. Call him, tell him what you need him to do.” 

“Angela...”

“I love you, my darling. Goodbye.”

“Wait, Angie, please...”

You - Scott, these are Scott’s memories - hang up. Wait for Herc’s call. Too numb to even warn any of the nice people around you about what’s coming.

“Scott, you still at the school?”

“Of course. Tell me what you need.”

The civil defense notification comes out ten minutes later. Scott is already sitting out on the football field with Charlie in his lap, watching from a distance as teachers load children onto busses. With luck, they’ll make it. Scott doesn’t know what'll happen to them, and he doesn’t care. His only connection to Herc was Angela. How in the hell is he supposed to go on without her? How does he survive without the taste of Herc’s kisses, the feel of his brother’s body against his own?

 _This is your punishment,_ he thinks to himself dully, _for being the sick, incestuous monster that you are._

“What’s going on, Uncle Scott?” his son asks. His son? No, his nephew; Angela gone now, that's all the relationship Scott will have with the boy. It scares him. Maybe Angela could survive the attack. Maybe...

“It’s part of the game day,” Scott lies. He can worry about himself later. Taking care of Charlie has to first priority. “Your daddy has a big surprise for us.”

And of course, Charlie thinks the whole thing is grand. His daddy picking them up in a real military chopper. Flying over the city, getting a glimpse of the kaijuu that’s just made landfall in downtown. He’s eleven; of course it’s a game. Until, at the base that night, Herc gets the news - in front of Charlie - that the hospital where Angela worked was destroyed. Thousands of people are dead. Her name will go on those rolls as well.

Charlie screams into Herc’s shoulder until he can’t scream anymore, beating his father’s chest with his little fists, puddling finally into a pool of sobbing grief that Scott picks up and rocks.

Herc looks lost. 

“I’ll not leave you again,” Scott swears. “I’m here. Whatever you two need.”

Herc reaches out with his free hand and squeezes Scott’s tight. Beyond words, Scott knows, and he wishes he could offer his body in comfort. But Herc’s not gay - that was the whole reason for Angela in the first place.

Herc’s not gay.

Herc doesn’t want him.

+++++

Yancy can feel the moment when the binding spell fails completely, crumbling under the weight of the memories he just accidentally prompted Scott to unlock. He didn’t mean to. He didn’t want to. He’s never seen anything like this, a incubus shoving his true nature so far down his body was actually able to handle human food, but then, Yancy’s willing to accept that there’s a lot he hasn’t seen, or done, or heard about.

This, though...

He just seriously fucked up.

That spell, seemingly cast out of instinct, was probably the only thing keeping Scott alive right now, so far from his mate.

Scott is sobbing, big heaving sobs that don’t have any noise to them, tears streaming down Yancy’s bare chest as Yancy holds him. One hand in his hair, the other at the base of his wings, holding him as his body threatens to shake itself apart. Flashes of what he’s thinking about, remembering, are coming through, but nothing that makes sense, and Yancy’s almost too ashamed to look.

It’s loud enough that he catches some of it, though. Scott, wearing a girl’s form, laughing as Daddy tackles him to a bed. Scott, playing with a young Chuck in his own male form, wishing he could hear the word _Mum_ again. Scott, cuddling up with Daddy after their first drift, the effort of keeping a decade’s worth of memories from him draining him completely. Scott, bringing back girls from the club to fuck in the room because it just doesn’t seem to work if he’s in the club without Herc...

“You didn’t know,” Yancy murmurs in surprise. “You don’t know what you are.”

Scott takes a deep breath, the shaking subsiding for a moment. “Fuck off,” Scott mutters.

“Yeah, not gonna do that.” He lifts Scott’s face, giving him a once over. His horns have most retracted, his fangs gone completely, but his wings are still out, that broken tail still limp against his leg. It breaks Yancy’s heart; Scott’s dying and he doesn’t even seem to know it. “Think you can stand? We should probably get back before lights out.”

Scott blinks a few times, his ginger complexion gone a strange shade of purple from the expenditure of emotion, but his eyes refocus, and he nods.

It takes a little bit of work to get him back in his uniform - Yancy would be happy wrapping him up in a towel but those wings just won’t go back in and the shirt is better cover - but between the two of them, they manage. Scott walks slow, Yancy’s arm wrapped around his waist for support, and they get a few cat-calls from other prisoners as they make their way back. Yancy doesn’t care. 

Taps plays pretty much the second Yancy gets Scott inside, the other incubus collapsing again, all energy spent. The watch officer is yelling from down the hall, cell doors slamming shut and locking loudly, but Yancy ignores it. Scott’s far too light for his size, and it’s nothing to shuck his clothes off, lay him out in the bottom bunk. Yancy shakes the blankets out of the top bunk, grabs the pillow, and slithers back down. Scott’s wings are leaving ash smears on the sheets.

“Too small for us both,” Scott grunts.

“Rals and I shared a bunk not much bigger than this during training. It’s fine,” Yancy says briskly, and crawls under the covers. Scott’s skin is clammy, and his breath is labored. “You need me right now. Actually, you need Da-Herc, but since he’s not here, I’ll have to do.”

“Fuck...”

“Yeah, fuck off, I know.” Yancy feels his forehead. “You’re burning up. When’s the last time you ate?”

“Tonight.”

“Not food. Sex. When’s the last time you had sex?”

Scott’s quiet. “Three days ago. The other prisoners don’t... but the guards...”

“Yeah, I figured that,” Yancy replies, trying to keep his anger down, and spoons carefully up behind Scott, keeping his movements slow. Scott squirms a little when Yancy’s cock slides up between his cheeks, but Yancy rubs his belly and he seems to relax. “Let me, okay? You’ll feel better.”

Scott lets out a huff, but shifts his leg a little, and Yancy figures that’s as good an invitation as he’s going to get right now.

He has to use his own juices to slick Scott up; Daddy’s little brother is so weak, he can’t even produce that right now. Yancy is careful as he can be, but Scott whimpers when he pushes in. It’s slow, slower than Yancy usually likes, and he has to dig in to one of Scott’s happier memories of Daddy in order to keep himself hard, but there’s something about that that seems to work. But it’s no sooner that he comes, that Scott starts crying again.

And, connected like they are, Yancy catches it.

_The court martial has been ugly. You feel like you’re dying inside, when Herc comes to the Sydney brig, to see you the night after sentencing. You’ll always be my brother, Scotty, but you’re sick and I can’t have you around Chuck, I can’t risk it. You shake your head and try to tell him what you should have told him the day Scissure attacked, but he tells you to shut the fuck up or I’ll finish the job I started in the conn-pod, I should have killed you for what you did to me, I loved you and this is what you do to me..._

_You reach out with everything you have, wishing he would come to you - Herc, PLEASE - and he does, finally he does. Takes your hands through the bars and you pull him close and you kiss him for the first time in your real, male body and tell him you don’t want him to remember all these things, that you don’t want him to carry this burden, to hate you if he needs to but not live with the horror of being a rape victim, because he’s not, because you love him so much and he’s suffered so much and you never meant to hurt him..._

_... it takes everything you have to do this, to burn yourself our of his mind, and it feels like you’re ending too, you can’t be you without him and you aren't, you aren't..._

Scott makes a noise like he’s dying, a strangled, inhuman sound.

“He thought... Herc thought I... oh fuck, no, no...”

Making sure not to pull out, Yancy strokes Scott’s broken wings, cheek to the back of his neck. He doesn’t know what else to do, other than keep holding him, as Scott starts crying again.

Daddy has a _lot_ to answer for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Scott, like, seriously. 
> 
> Sorry for the drift-y style here, if that works, but Scott's got a lot of shit in his head he's been blocking out. Now, to see if HERC remembers any of this now that Scott does...


	4. Chapter 4

Yancy wakes up alone, the scent of smoke drifting down from the top bunk.

He’s not really sure what he was expecting. Hansen men aren’t exactly in touch with their emotions, incubi or not. 

“Last night was intense,” he says quietly, and pokes the bottom of the mattress above him. “You doing alright?”

“The fuck do you think?” drifts down the answer.

Yancy sighs and pulls himself out of bed, reaching for the underwear he’s got slung over the metal at his feet. “I’m not trying to be a jerk here, Scott, but...”

“How ‘bout you explain this shit to me?” One of the photos is waggled in his face from above. Daddy and Chuck, it’s pretty clear, even if Chuck’s face is out of frame and Daddy’s is turned away from the camera. Chuck’s got his belly down and his cute little ass in the air, Daddy kissing his tailbone, three fingers working inside of him. “What is this?”

Yancy sighs and climbs up the short ladder, settling himself next to Scott. The other incubus looks disturbed, extremely disturbed, dark red hair sticking out in all directions like he’s been tugging at it. His eyes are worried. He looks better than he did yesterday, but that could be a problem too; Scott was surviving, barely, with whatever spell it was he cast in order to forget what he was, that he was mated. Now that he remembers, how long is he going to make it without his mate? And fuck only knows how long it’ll take to drag Daddy out here to Pearl Harbor; Raleigh can’t leave the ‘Dome, and Daddy won’t leave Raleigh.

Not until the trial.

Fuck.

But until Yancy can come up with some kind of plan, he has to proceed with honesty, even if it’s going to hurt. Which it probably is. “Chuck’s like you, Scott. Like us.”

“He’s...”

“An incubus, yeah. It’s hereditary. Breeds true.”

But that only seems to upset Scott more. “What’s Herc _doing_ with him, though?”

“Herc’s giving him what he needs,” Yancy says gently, and Scott looks at him, frowning. “Haven’t you noticed how sick you feel when you don’t fuck somebody on the regular? Dude, I mean, I’ve never known any of us to actually be able to physically eat. You shouldn’t be able to do it. We live off orgasm energy and energy alone.” 

Scott’s expression goes incredulous. “So we... eat sex?”

“Yeah. And I think you mated, umm, Herc when you got that tattoo on your shoulder, which means you should only be able to eat from his, or when he’s around. That’s typically what it means when we let a human mark us...”

Daddy’s brother slumps. “But this, Chuck, our boy...” the words trail off. Scott clearly has no idea what to say or think. “He’s our boy, Herc’s son. His _son_.”

“Well, yeah.” Yancy nods, trying to figure out how to explain this. Why doesn’t Scott know this stuff? Did he never once look in the mirror, in all of these years, and realize he had horns? “We don’t normally change fully until our mid-teens, a second puberty, I guess you could call it.”

“But...”

“It’s a really confusing time, Scott. Difficult. Our human parent-”

“Herc’s not gay, though.” Scott brings the cigarette up, but his hands are shaking. “He’s not gay.”

“He is now. I... I changed his memories,” Yancy admits. Scott’s nostrils flare, temper rising so quickly is feels like the temperature in the room’s just dropped fifteen degrees, but Yancy keeps going. “This thing with Chuck, it’s the first time they’ve been close in so long and he loves Chuck so much, he didn’t want to lose it, so he asked to help him with...”

“Get out.”

“What?”

“Get off m’ bunk, put your damn clothes on, stop talking, and get out.”

“Scott, I’m locked in here...”

“Get OUT!” Scott yells.

And mercifully, that’s about the time the automatic locks click open. Breakfast time.

There’s nothing else Yancy can do, so he pulls on his clothes in silence, takes the photos away from Scott, and tucks them back into their hiding place in all of his court martial material.

Scott still sits at his own table that morning. Still tries to eat. He can’t do it, though, just starts coughing, coughing so violently he has to get up and leave the mess.

Breaks Yancy’s heart, in a way, but then, he did expend a lot of energy last night and nobody’s ever accused an incubus of being particularly objective in the face of gnawing hunger. So Yancy turns his attention back to the sweet boy who used to be an Army Private until he got caught practicing his hacking skills on one of the military nets.

“What time do you have to be at your counseling session again?” he asks, and bumps the kid’s leg under the table.

Fuck. He could eat that smile.

Yancy doesn’t feel guilty about any of it at all, until about an hour later, on his way up to visit the Commandant, one of the guards he’s trying to charm tells him that his cellmate was just taken to the prison infirmary.

“What the fuck happened?”

“He collapsed or something,” the guard tells him. “They found him passed out in the bathroom.”

Yancy thanks the guard.

And races down to the infirmary.

+++++

Herc is stretched out on the sofa, Chuck tucked into his side and Raleigh still drying himself from the shower, a coffee in his hand and the remote in the other, pleasantly tired after a good round of sex with his boys and long training sessions today in the Kwoon. He’d prefer it was beer he was drinking right now, but maybe later tonight, after the day is really done.

Everything should be okay - it’s been a lovely day, really - but he’s been unsettled since the morning. Restless, unable to keep still. Something is _wrong_ , but he hasn’t been able to put his finger on what it is. 

And now his chest is on fire. Like really bad indigestion. Or a heart attack.

Hopefully, it’s not a heart attack. Although it could be. Too much sex lately, maybe. Herc just hasn’t been able to help himself; his favorite thing in the world is Chuck’s body, and Raleigh just smells so damn good, all those sweet pregnancy hormones making him even more perfect than he already is... 

_Angela was like that,_ Herc thinks. But he really doesn’t like thinking about that. 

“Hey Daddy,” Chuck asks, twisting up to look him in the face. His tone is light but his eyes are worried. “Have we heard anything about Yancy?”

Herc strokes his boy’s hair. Yancy. That’s probably it. He’s probably just worried about Yancy. His poor boy, all alone in prison, locked up with that asshole Scott. “Not much. Major Heller’s passed along a few things” - _like how he’s bunking with your uncle_ , but Herc doesn’t say that, too many questions - “and we’ve got that conference call with him in a few hours, though. We can ask him then.”

“Raleigh’s worried about him,” Chuck replies quietly. “Yancy’s been keeping his dreams locked down.”

“Do they always share dreams?” His chest really is on fire. Herc sets the coffee aside, leaning forward, hand pressed over the area that’s burning. The lingering heat from the cup, on the skin of his palm, eases it a bit. Indigestion. That’s all it is. 

He truly hates the idea of Yancy being forced to shared a cell with Scott. That whole situation... Herc doesn’t like looking at it, hasn’t looked at it since the day Scott was hauled off after the trial. The whole conn-opd disaster is a blur of undifferentiated gray, like it was so terrible his mind wouldn’t even hold onto it. The shrink they made him go see, after Lucky, said that can happen with highly traumatic events. They just don’t impress. The wave of nausea he feels when he even thinks about it is enough to convince Herc that blanking on the specifics is a good thing. He was able to hold out long enough to give his testimony at the court martial, do his duty, and that’s it.

He loved Scott once. Now, all he feels is disgust.

Chuck shrugs. “Raleigh’s just worried.”

Herc presses a kiss to the top of his son’s head, stroking his cheek. “We’re all worried. But don’t fret. Everything’s going to be alright.”

“I know,” Chuck says, snuggling in closer with a yawn. “I know, Daddy.”

This is normally the point in things where Herc knows he should be tilting Chuck’s face even further up, kissing him, making love to him, but for whatever reason, he can’t do it. It’s not that he’s not feeling it - even though he isn’t - but that the thought of sex is somehow making him queasy.

_Scott, sitting at the other end of the couch in their quarters, Charlie curled up in his lap asleep, little sprog worn himself out on the excitement of visiting the jaeger bays, their first day in the Sydney Shatterdome and what little they own is in the mound of bags back by the door. You’re so grateful to him, because he’s been like a second father to Charlie, anything he needs, always taking such good care of him since Angela died..._

Herc feels Chuck push up, turning around, weight shifted back over his knees. “Daddy?” he asks. But the words sound like they’re coming from a long ways away.

_...I think I’m going to put him down and go out for a bit, Scott says, and this is the thing you hate about him, his constant inability to stay in one place, his need to drift away from you when you’ve been doing nothing nothing but giving to him since your father kicked him out. Do you have to go we just got here? you ask and he looks at you with a big grin that hides so many things he won’t let you see and says yes..._

The fire that was restricted to his chest is spreading out under his skin, going everywhere and he has to get up right now, has to get away from...

_You don’t have a bed for Charlie yet so Scott puts him in yours, his isn’t made up yet because Scott’s a lazy bastard sometimes and he didn’t get it done earlier, which means he’ll be whining about bunking in with you again. Not that you mind; your bed’s been too lonely since Angela left you and even if it’s not the same it’s nice to have the warmth of another person close. Not that you would ever touch Scott like that, because he’s your brother and a male and nothing you like at all. His eyes meet your, when he’s done kissing Charlie goodnight, and you don’t like the question there. Herc, he begins, but you tell him you’re going to..._

Herc stumbles into the bathroom, feeling a bit like he’s drunk as he stumbles into the wall on the way. Raleigh’s still in the shower, but Herc can’t even bring himself to say anything to the boy. He grabs for the sink, barely getting the faucet on, trying to splash cold water in his face, try to calm himself d-

_You’re in the shower and you hear a noise behind you, outside the curtain, and you pull it back to see the door closed and your brother there. I’m sorry he says and pulls off his shirt, Herc I love you and I’m sorry, please don’t remember..._

“Daddy?” Raleigh is asking, wet and dripping between his knees. Herc realizes he’s on the floor, that he’s shaking, but he has no idea how he got here. His whole body hurts. “Daddy, come on, say something. What’s going on?”

“He looks like he’s in shock,” Chuck says from the doorway. “Can you hear us?”

With great effort - with the memory subsiding back into the gray, with the pain in his body fading back to that dull discomfort - Herc nods his head. Chuck disappears and Raleigh is at his side, taking Herc’s hands in his own, pulling him up, leading him back to their bed. Herc lets himself be pushed down and tucked in, Raleigh propping up pillows between his back and the wall, snuggling into his side just as Chuck comes back with a cup of hot tea. 

“I think I made it right,” he says with a small frown, and Herc takes the chipped mug from him gratefully. The heat under his palms is centering. 

“I’m sure it’s perfect, love.”

Raleigh’s fingers spread out on his hip, under the covers. “What was that, Daddy?”

Herc shakes his head, because now he can’t remember, can’t remember at all. That grayness is back, and he’s grateful. He used to love his brother, but what happened, what he did, what came out in the drift... all he feels now is hate. “I dunno. I was thinking... about Scott.”

Chuck leans his head on Herc’s shoulder. “You never let me see it.”

Herc takes a sip of tea - too much sugar, but that’s alright - and kisses him absently. “You don’t want to see it,” he mutters. “Don’t need to know that about your uncle.”

“Yancy’s worried,” Raleigh says softly. “He’s worried about Scott.”

And as much as Herc doesn’t like the thought of his eldest boy alone in prison, he hates it even more, that Yancy has to share space with his fuckhead younger brother. Well, he won’t let Scott hurt his boy. Not a chance. “I’ll talk to Stacker. Get him moved.”

Raleigh’s breath is soft on Herc’s arm. “I don’t think that’s it.”

“Of course it is,” Herc tells him firmly. 

What else could it be?

+++++

Yancy licks the last of the mesmerized doctor’s cum from Scott’s belly and moves back up to offer Scott a kiss. But Scott just pushes him away, tears on his ashen cheeks.

Swallowing the load, Yancy stretches himself back out against the other incubus’ side, hands straying under the irritating sheet to find bare skin once again. “That didn’t do anything for you?” he asks. 

Scott shakes his head, pressing his hands over his eyes, but that only seems to make the tears come faster.

And Yancy doesn’t know what to do. The infirmary staff weren’t very helpful, and the doctor only said anything after Yancy whammied him. Scott collapsed, evidently. Sounded like his body had started rejecting food. He had still been unconscious when Yancy entered the room, so at least the sex woke him up, But still, Yancy just fucked Scott while having a human masturbate right next to them, and Scott didn’t feel any of it? Last night, Yancy knows his own presence seemed to at least have some effect, and Scott’s been periodically feeding and...

 _You broke the protection magic,_ he reminds himself.

He is really, really tired of feeling guilty.

The solution is obvious, though. It’s not complicated at all. It’ll work, because Daddy is _Daddy_ , and he’ll make it better. And besides, Daddy does remember thinking of Angela as sort of boyish, remembers wanting her to be male, and she was and she is, and...

Yeah, this shouldn’t be difficult at all.

“We need to get Daddy, Herc, down here,” Yancy tells Scott. Scott just makes a strangled sound of protest, and Yancy tugs his hands down to look him in the eye. “You _need_ him, or you’re going to starve to death.”

“Good.”

“What?!”

“Good,” Scott repeats, and licks dry lips. “Twenty years of... and it’ll be over. I want it to be over. Let it be over.”

Yancy’s chest tightens up. “You don’t mean that.”

Scott just nods once, the tears coming again, and now is apparently not the time for Yancy to calmly or logically explain why he’s being a fucking idiot. 

Fucking Hansens. Seriously. But whatever, Yancy figures. He’ll just have to make his own plans.


	5. Chapter 5

Herc is still thrumming with nervousness when Major Heller’s face comes up on the video telecon screen, and the news the Air Force lawyer’s got for them doesn’t make him feel any better.

“Yancy’s where?”

“Evidently he didn’t have permission to be in the clinic.”

“But that’s no reason to put him in solitary!” Chuck protests, just a little too loudly, at Herc’s side. Raleigh is just staring at the table, silent. Herc reaches for the boy’s hand under the table, squeezing it tight. He’s scared; solitary confinement for a creature that lives off the life energy of others must be dangerous.

“Ranger Hansen,” Heller replies in that infinitely calm way of his, “I respect what you’re saying, but there are rules that Ranger Becket has to follow in regards to his incarceration. If it helps, I was told that he only got three days down there.” 

Raleigh makes a little noise in the back of his throat, and Herc has to resist the urge to pull him into his lap to comfort him. He’s hurting, and Herc can feel it like it’s his own. “So where does that leave us with today’s discussion about the case?”

Major looks relieved to get off that subject. “I’ve subpoenaed the transcripts from LOCCENT, and my staff has interviewed everybody who was on shift that night. We’ve also got copies of the K-Science data that was streaming in on the ocean sensor ‘nets. I think we’ve got a case. But I can tell you right now, I doubt some of this shit would play to a civilian jury. You boys sound pretty damn cocky on the conn pod recorder.”

Raleigh picks at some invisible spot on the table. “You didn’t feel him in the drift,” he mutters.

“What was that?”

“Raleigh said they were talking through the drift,” Herc says, loud enough for the mic to pick up. “Pilots do that. Talking self-confident bullshit is a way of dealing with the fear. But you can’t hide anything in the drift. They were having a much different conversation privately.”

Major Heller makes a note in his open Moleskin, talking as he writes. “That’s interesting. Might be a good angle to take for the court martial. I’ll need to know more about it, though. Be able to explain it to the court. I didn’t think you talk through the drift. Could you...”

“Why was he in the clinic?” Raleigh interrupts, louder that before, glancing up at the camera for the first time. “What was Yancy doing there? Why would he risk it?”

“Risk what?” the lawyer asks, pausing.

“Solitary confinement,” Raleigh replies, like he’s dumbfounded at having to ask.

Herc squeezes his hand again, more warning than comfort, and Raleigh glares at him. Major Heller coughs a bit, looking guilty as a man can through a grainy video.

“Umm, nobody’s contacted you, Senior Ranger Hansen?”

“Contacted me about what?” Herc asks, quite deliberate, Raleigh’s fear starting to rankle him.

“Hang on a sec, the signal’s getting a little squirrely,” and Heller reaches over to some control panel just out of the range of the camera. The picture gets a little grainier, but his worry still comes through clearly. “Okay, I turned off the recorder, just in case. I’m not supposed to be handing out official medical information, so let’s just say I’m delivering you the official rumor.”

“What’s going on?”

The lawyer sighs. “Your brother, Scott, he collapsed this morning after breakfast. The prison infirmary couldn’t stabilize him, and sent him over to the military hospital. According to the doctor I didn’t speak to, he’s showing symptoms in line with severe starvation. He’s been listed in critical condition.”

Raleigh stiffens; Chuck, on the other hand, explodes. 

“The bloody hell’s been going on at that place?!” Chuck demands, on his feet now, and he punches the table. “It’s fucking America, can’t you wankers afford to feed him?! Or is it just because you think he pulled some kind of evil shit, like that makes it okay to torture him like some kind of...”

“Chuck!” Herc snaps, trying to get his son to sit back down, but Major Heller just shakes his head.

“It’s not policy to deny prisoners food, Ranger Hansen, so I don’t know what to tell you there. I am only telling you what I’ve heard.”

And that nervousness Herc’s been feeling all day boils up into his throat; all of the sudden, he can’t hardly breathe. Feels like his chest is crushing in. He puts a hand over his heart, clutching at his chest. Raleigh’s concern washes over him, but he just shakes his head, pushes his boy away.

Chuck doesn’t give him a second glance, though. “So why weren’t we told? We’re all the family he’s got.”

“It just happened a few hours ago...”

“The whole fucking world knows where we live,” Chuck growls. “That’s not a reason, _sir_.”

Major Heller is silent for a moment. “I only found out because one of my former clients works at that infirmary as an orderly, and I only asked because it concerned one of my current clients. Now,” and he reaches back over to the panel, “it looks like the signal’s behaving again, so why don’t we get back to your case?”

“No need,” Chuck replies, and while he’s still cold, it’s less out of anger and more out of determination. Herc hears it as if at a distance. “We’ll be in Honolulu tomorrow. We can talk in person then.”

The lawyer starts to say something, but Chuck kills the feed.

“Chuck...”

“Shut it,” Chuck snaps, and Herc has never seen his boy glare at him like this. He’d kind of like to take the little shit’s head off for it - disrespecting his daddy like this - but his heart is still pounding, lungs still straining beneath those bands that have tightened around his ribs. “You’ve not told me what Uncle Scott did, and I don’t fuckin’ care. I’m not lettin’ him die alone.”

“He’s not dying,” Herc replies, the pounding starting to subside, that anger that always seems to well up in him at the thought of his brother reasserting itself. “Fucker’s probably just hasn’t been eating or something.”

“What, to spite you?” Chuck sneers.

Herc glares at him, as best he can, doubled over in his chair. “I don’t know where this tone is coming from, young man, but you need to...”

“He is dying,” Raleigh interrupts, before Chuck can respond. “Yancy’s frantic over it.”

“Do you know why?” Chuck asks, biting his lip.

Raleigh goes quiet for a moment, eyes closed, but shakes his head after a few moments anyway. “I can’t tell.”

“Chuck,” Herc says, trying to reach for his son’s hand. “Chuck, baby, we can’t just...”

“I’m going. You’re free to do whatever you want.”

“You can’t eat if I don’t go.”

“Fuck you. Uncle Scott’s starving, isn’t he?” Chuck snaps, and shoves his chair away, heading out before Herc can say anything else at all.

It only leaves him feeling more desperate.

Feels like he’s being ripped apart.

Herc looks at Raleigh, searching for a reason to stay - his boy can’t come to Hawaii, not unless he transfers to lock-up - but Raleigh just shakes his head again. “Whatever he did, you have to go see him.”

“Honey...”

“Yancy’s in solitary for him,” Raleigh says simply. There’s no accusation in it, which somehow makes it hurt worse. “Whatever Scott did, Yancy cared enough to do that. Yancy’s not a push-over, and you know he’s probably fed off him. He knows what Scott did, and he still took that hit. You gotta trust him here.”

“Rals, I... I can’t go see Scott,” Herc replies desperately. “I can’t see him again.”

“Daddy,” Raleigh says, and there is steel in his words, “you have to.”

Two hours later, Herc and Chuck are on one of those PPDC charter planes.

Chuck doesn’t talk to him for the entire ten hour flight.

It doesn’t get any better once they get to the hospital.

In fact, it just gets a hell of a lot worse.

+++++

Scott doesn’t want to be here. Doesn’t want to be laying in a hospital bed, too weak to pull out the IV in his arm that’s only making the ache in his bone all the worse. Doesn’t want to be _waiting_.

That Becket kid, Yancy, said it was inevitable, didn’t he?

Why won’t it just happen?

It’s not that Scott wants to die. He doesn’t. It’s not something he would choose for himself, if given the choice, but it doesn’t seem like there’s any other option right now. 

He remembers passing out in the hallway in a puddle of his own vomit, his stomach churning over so violently he couldn’t even make it to the bathroom. There were lights, the smell of open sea air, people talking... Becket came in at one point, tried to get him to eat. That’s a lucid memory. He seems to have passed out after that, whatever, and now he seems to be in a regular hospital, outside the prison.

Becket said they, incubi - and how fucking insane is it that there are others out there like him, as fucked up as him? - can only live off sex energy. Last night, it seemed more than a little insane. Scott was almost willing to accept it earlier, but nothing happened then either. So who knows what the fuck is going on with him?

There’s a nurse that keeps coming in, checking his chart, going out again, but he doesn’t want to talk to her, so he’s been feigning sleep. But he can hear her talking to the doctors; he’s in a severe state of malnutrition, _starvation_ , they said.

Food he can’t keep down, sex doesn’t help. The doctors have no clue and Becket, Becket was trying to help but he got caught and drug off, to solitary probably, and that means Scott’s alone.

It hurts to breath. Like his body doesn’t have the strength to move his diaphragm. His heart aches. He’d be freezing, if they didn’t have a heating blanket tucked over him.

Herc and Chuck... they don’t know he’s here. Scott made sure to take them both off any kind of notification lists the prison had. He went as far as to specifically request that they not be notified. And Becket - the interfering little cunt who’s apparently somehow fucking them both, and Scott doesn’t even want to start thinking about how that’s possible, it’s so upsetting, Herc touching their boy like that but never touching _him_ like that - won’t be able to access a telephone for days. They won’t come. There’s nothing he has to hold out for. Nobody to have to admit the truth to. 

Because Scott can’t have what he _does_ want. He came to terms with that a long time ago, back when he screwed everything up. His brother doesn’t love him and their son doesn’t know him. It’s a truth he lived with for so long, it’s just become part of him. It is who he is; a man without his family. 

It’s his own fault, after all. That’s something else he’s known for a long time. He wanted so badly to be who he was - wife and mother - without being what he wasn’t. Without having to pretend. Without any more lies. He used to tell himself that his lies would only hurt them all in the end. That somehow, eventually, Herc could love his little brother like he loved his wife.

But that logic was bullshit. Angela, Angela should have survived Scissure, Angela should have been there that first terrible night, holding her Charlie as he sobbed. Angela should have been the one to go through Jaeger Academy with Herc, and Angela should have been Lucky’s left-hand pilot, and Angela should have been there at Charlie’s graduation to give him a big hug, tell her son how proud she was of him. No, no, Scott didn’t do this for them; losing Angela wasn’t what they needed. Losing Angela destroyed them.

Scott killed Angela because he wanted to take her place. He took her away from her husband and son because he’s a selfish bastard. 

They were never his to love like that.

Should have been Scott who died the day Scissure attacked.

Better late than never. Best to correct that mistake now. 

It really does hurt to be awake.

Huddling as far under that heated blanket as he can get, Scott closes his eyes again. Maybe he can just sleep through the rest of this. Not dream, just sleep.

That’d be nice.

But the universe must hate him, because just as he’s drifting off into that wonderful restful darkness, he hears something he can’t ignore.

“Uncle Scott?”

+++++

“Uncle Scott?” Chuck asks again, feeling helpless, holding himself up by the footboard of his uncle’s bed. Rock star jaeger pilot, the hospital at least gave him his own room, so they’ve got some privacy to talk. But Chuck doesn’t know what to say right now.

It’s just...

Daddy didn’t tell him much about the court martial. Didn’t tell him much about any of it, actually. Most of it happened back when he was still in school, and Daddy said what Scott did was horrible, so Chuck didn’t think to question it. _Scott’s been taken into custody, Scott’s been sentenced, I don’t want you talking to him any more..._

Whatever Uncle Scott did, though, he couldn’t have deserved this. Starving to death... even with wartime shortages, nobody should have to starve to death. 

Uncle Scott doesn’t stir for a while, and the only reason Chuck doesn’t go get the doctor is because the the heart monitor is still showing a beat. So it’s not like he’s... gone.

“Charlie?” Scott finally croaks, voice weak.

Chuck doesn’t exactly rush to his side, but he does move, his own hand seeking Scott’s out, under the blanket. While touch helps Chuck these days, the feel of Scott’s clammy skin only makes him more desperate. “Hey, old man,” he says, trying to be light. “Long time no see.”

“We dropped you off at Kodiak,” Scott says, blinking, like his eyes won’t focus. “You were so nervous but wouldn’t let either of us hug you.”

“Yeah, I uhh,” Chuck swallows. He remembers that day. It was the last time he saw Uncle Scott, who seemed even more nervous about letting him go there than Daddy did. “I graduated, remember?”

“I know. We get the Internet in here. I was so proud of you, when I saw the news.” Scott turns his hand up, just enough to hold Chuck’s. “Our little boy, all grown up.”

Chuck frowns; it’s an odd turn of phrase. And while Uncle Scott was always full of laughter, he was very seldom emotional. At least, not in a sentimental way. “Yeah, I... I missed you at the graduation.”

Scott licks his cracked, dry lips. “I would have been there. You know that.”

“Why weren’t you?” There’s no answer for that, and Chuck feels his temper start to mount. “Uncle Scott, why weren’t you there? What did you do?”

Scott shakes his head slowly, once, pained. “I didn’t... I didn’t do...”

“You did something. Daddy wouldn’t have reported some bullshit bender incident, you were always off doing shit like that, he never cared.”

“Charlie, I can’t, don’t ask me about this. Please.”

“What did you do?”

“You weren’t supposed to come.”

“Yeah, we get a call from Yancy’s lawyer and he tells us you’re dying, of course we’re supposed to come.”

Scott makes a little noise that could be a laugh. He always did laugh at the worst times. “I don’t want you here.”

It hurts, far more than it should. “Why not? Why can’t I be here?”

“Your dad... he hates me.”

“Why?” Chuck demands. “Why won’t you tell me?”

“He needs to hate me.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I remember.” The effort of those two words seem to exhaust him, but there’s obviously something his uncle needs to say. Taking a deep breath, Scott pulls his hand loose from Chuck’s, lifting his fingers just enough to touch Chuck’s cheek. “I remember... when you were a baby. We didn’t have much money for toys, but you were... you were such a curious little sprog, you needed things to explore. I’d work extra hours at the hospital, tell Herc we were out at the park or the beach, but I’d leave you at the daycare. I felt bad about it, but... but it let me get you the things you needed. I sent you a little stuffed plane once, and you loved it, packed it everywhere. I knew you were gonna be a pilot like your daddy was... you make me so proud...”

Chuck finds himself more and more confused, the longer the ramble goes on. Out of fucking character, sure, but what Uncle Scott is saying? When he was a baby? Uncle Scott wasn’t around when he was a baby. That’s what Daddy always said. Uncle Scott never visited back then, not even for holidays, but he remembers that plane. Lost it the day Scissure attacked, the little thing tucked into his bookbag. “You made me leave that behind. Said I couldn’t take my bag on the chopper, that we’d come back for it.”

“I know. I’m sorry, honey. Took so much from you that day. Lied to you so much...” Scott’s hand drops, and he sighs again. “Becket, he told me... he told me what’s been going on. You and Herc.”

And if Chuck was worried before, his blood goes ice-cold now. “What?”

“Is he hurting you?”

“No!” Chuck jerks away, heart in his throat. “No, of course not! What? Why would he tell you that?”

“I just wanted you boys to be happy. I wanted us all to be happy.”

“Uncle Scott, you’re not making any damn sense.”

“I didn’t know. I thought your dad and I could...” There are tears on Scott’s cheeks again. “Is your dad here?”

Chuck wipes his own face again, nodding. 

“He doesn’t want to see me, does he?”

“Please just tell me what you did.” Chuck knows he’s begging now and he doesn’t care. “What did you do?”

Uncle Scott closes his eyes, chest rising and falling deeply, but before Chuck can tell him to stop being a wanker and say something, he...

He shifts.

Shimmers, the bedclothes falling a little.

Somebody with a slighter frame, longer hair, smaller hands, but the same ashen skin. The same scent. Forcing herself to sit up. Pained, expectant.

Terribly, terribly worried.

“Mum?” Chuck breathes.

But Scott - Mum, and what the _fuck_ is going on? - nods once, smiling a smile that’s all Hansen, and shimmers back, that male form reasserting. Slumped unconscious on the pillow, on his side, the livid scars left during Lucky’s last battle cutting down his bare skin as the hospital gown unties and slips away.

He’s got horns. Broken, burned, sad little stumps of horns. And wings, bird wings, loosened feathers falling like volcanic ash on the worn blanket.

Chuck can hear his own heart hammering in his ears, nervous as he lifts his head, glancing over on his uncle’s shoulder. Scott has Lucky’s wings on his back, sure, but Mum had a tattoo there too, one she was so proud of. Chuck still remembers the day she got it, slathering it up with Aquaphor in front of the bathroom mirror. _You like it, baby? Your dad picked it out for me_.

Chuck had thought it the silliest thing in the world. He didn’t have time for angels back then. Planes were much cooler, and he told her so. She’d laughed, and picked him up and kissed him and...

And it’s there. Not Lucky’s wings, but Mum’s words. That little line about angels. Something Daddy chose for her, something Daddy went with her to get, something...

Something like his own mating mark.

And seeing that, the pieces coming together - if not quite connected, holy _shit_ \- Chuck tears out of the room. He races down to the elevator, taking the stairs instead, out to the front of the hospital and the smoke pit, where Daddy’s indulging in a rare cigarette with a few other military blokes, talking and chuckling like his brother’s not dying upstairs.

“I need you,” Chuck hisses, not even giving his surprised father a chance to respond.

“Need me for what?”

“Fixing Uncle Scott.”

“Chuck,” and Daddy gives him that _look_ , “I can’t fix what’s wrong with that arsehole brother of...”

“He’s like me and he needs _you_!” Chuck half-yells, punching Daddy hard in the chest. Maybe harder than he meant to, because Daddy goes stumbling back, anger melting into shock on his face. But Chuck’s pissed now, and he ignores the stab of pain from the hit, just like ignores the flood of shock that washes through him as he grabs Daddy by the front of his fucking vest and drags him away from the smoke pit.

He doesn’t know for sure what’s going on here, and he doesn’t really care. But he’ll be damned if he’s going to lose his mum twice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lalalalale, have more angst!


	6. Chapter 6

Herc’s not exactly sure what the hell is going on, but he doesn’t shake his boy off and demand answers, right then and there. No, he lets himself be dragged back into the hospital building and up towards the elevator bank. Chuck is positively on fire with panic, and if what he said was true...

It should be a _holy shit_ kind of moment. But mostly, Herc can’t summon much more than irritation. Just thinking about his little brother makes him so goddamn mad.

How is this happening? Why is everyone in his life suddenly some kind of supernatural entity? And his _brother_ , of everyone it could have been? Why Scott? How? When? It had to have been here, during his prison time, right? Herc would have noticed something that drastic, that life-altering. He would have seen is baby brother avoiding food, going out to the clubs every night, sneaking into his bed or...

_...you’ve never been the type to be sweet and neither has he, so you only tell him that you don’t mind him sleeping in your bed, not that you almost look forward to it, something solid against the nights you go out to the pubs with the other blokes from your squadron and find some girl who catches your eye. They don’t care, but he’s always here, a sleepy smile and a hey ‘Le on his lips when you slip back into..._

Herc grabs for the handrail in the lift, that burning sensation spreading back out under his skin. Fuck, it hurts. And what was that? Scott, back after Dad just kicked him out and Herc picked him up from the boys’ shelter? They lived together back then, before the damn kid decided sex and booze was more interesting up the Gold Coast than down in Sydney itself.

Sex and booze.

Holy hell.

“Those benders,” Herc mutters.

Chuck finally looks at him with something other than anger in his face. “Huh?”

Steadying himself as the lift dings what is apparently Scott’s floor, Herc inhales. “He was always off partying, ‘specially once he got old enough. Bad shit. Sometimes he wouldn’t come home for days. He...” and Herc stops himself again, the rage bubbling up again in his chest - _you get the call from the police again, and there’s very real fear in you this time as you turn your car around and head down to the station instead of to base... he looks like hell, sitting in that cell and you get him out with as little drama as possible, but it takes everything you have not to scream at him in the car... why are you doing this to yourself, Scotty, tell me how to help how to fix this, which he must know, because he looks at you as soon as you get him back into the flat and says please ‘Le don’t rememb-_ “Used to piss me off so bad. That fuckin’ kid...”

“So?” his son drawls. Chuck’s expression - while odd - doesn’t really change. Herc, however, can feel the confusion pushing out along their bond. Confusion, tinged with concern. Worry. And something else, churning down low enough so Herc can’t reach it. “Does he deserve to die for it?”

The question rattles Herc badly, and he stares at his boy. Just for a moment, and quite deliberately steps past him, straight into Scott’s room before he can lose his nerve.

And stops cold, the second he lays eyes on him.

Chuck... Chuck wasn’t kidding.

Scott’s laying up on his side, shivering. There’s some heavy blanket - a heating pad, maybe - that’s fallen down around his waist, and he’s trying to reach for it, but his hands don’t seem to be working. He’s emaciated, circuitry scars stretched taut over his ribs, not an ounce of muscle - much less fat - left on his once-strong frame. And...

He has wings. Or, the remnants of wings - Herc can see the structure, charred bones that roughly resemble bird wings, limp against his shoulders. The sheets, his skin, the bed are smeared with ashen feathers. Heart in his throat, Herc moves close enough to touch one.

_He’s been gone for a week this time, and you’re grateful Angie’s out of town visiting family, because you’re pretty sure she’d break up with you if she could see this. Scott’s throwing up in the bathroom, sick from dinner, and all you want is to figure out some way to help him, the right thing to say when he comes back out. His breath is minty, an apology breathed against your shoulder as he slumps down against you on the sofa. Didn’t mean to get sick on you, he mumbles, and you just stroke his lank hair, smelling the cigarette smoke, the cheap booze, the sex, that seems positively imprinted in his skin these days. Tell me what you need and I’ll give it to you, you think, but you don’t say that. Not your fault, Scotty, you tell him instead, last time we visit that take-away, fuckers tried to poison you. He laughs, but turns into you a little more and..._

There’s the hate again, the anger that always comes, but this close, Scott so... _this_ , it doesn’t make sense. Herc’s spent nearly half a decade drifting now, with his brother and son and all the other people they put him with, back during training, and he knows the difference between natural-born and foreign emotion. This isn’t his, so what the fuck is it?

The feather crumbles under his fingers.

_What the fuck is this? you tease him from the edge of the bathroom, and he gives you a big shit-eating grin,. Lucky’s wings, pretty fucking cool, eh? Charlie’s gonna love it, Scott laughs, and tosses you the Aquaphor. Lube me up, would you? You want to tease him about it - kinky shit little bro - but it feels good, somehow, when you touch him. Ghost drift, you figure, and slide your fingers across the fresh ink..._

_You ask him why he’s nervous and he gives you a sheepish smile and tells you that you already know what I’m worried about, Herc, I haven’t been a saint. I already know that about you, you tell him, and clap him on the shoulder, but you don’t tell him the rest, that there’s nothing he could do to ever make you stop loving him, he’s your family, the last of your family, and you’d do anything to keep him safe..._

_You’re standing in front of the cell door, Scott hunched down with his elbows on the crossbeam of the bars, head down, and you can’t stop the flood of loathing you feel for him. What he did... what he did do to...he..._

_I love you, ‘Le, Angela says, and it’s the first time she says it, and..._

But _’Le_ was always Scott’s nickname for him, something born of a childhood speech impediment that made it impossible for him to say Herc’s whole name.

Scott doesn’t stir, and desperation starts to bubble up in Herc’s chest, breaking the anger apart. It makes it both harder and easier to think. He reaches for everything, everything he knows and everything he’s learned about these people and...

Incubi can change memories, can’t they? Change and warp and erase and...

He brushes some of those ash streaks away from his brother’s shoulder.

Scott has Angela’s tattoo. 

He’s got Angela’s tattoo.

_... she begged you to take her, joking in that easy way of hers but still begging because that’s how she asks for things she needs, and she’s smiling at you now, fingers wound through yours. The needle is buzzing and you feel, you feel perfect, whole, complete..._

“Oh, god,” Herc breathes.

How did he miss this? 

How could he send his mate to prison? 

Scott’s eyes are still closed, his breathing labored, his body still shivering. A fresh wave of disgust crashes over him, but Herc tells it to go to hell and pulls the heating blanket further up. He’s gentle as he can be, careful over those injured wings. He pulls up the room’s only chair close enough so he can lay a hand over Scott’s.

The touch is grounding, even as the anger builds and builds and builds and builds...

_...hate me if you need to..._

“Busted me up when you went to prison,” Herc begins, not sure what to say. If Scott can even hear him. If Scott wants to talk to him. “Whatever you did. But you took it, didn’t you? Whatever you did, that’s why I get angry when I think about you. The memory ain’t there anymore and you covered up the missing bits with rage, eh?”

There’s no reply, and Herc wishes Yancy was here; his clever boy, Yancy would know what to do. Clearly, being apart from each other had nearly killed Scott, but Herc’s not sure what to do about it. Scott’s been starved for so long, he doesn’t have the strength to open his eyes, much less have sex. Might only hurt him more, Herc reckons, but something has to be done. 

His eyes fall on the IV. Saline or intravenous nutrition, that can’t be helping anything. Herc reaches over and pulls it out of his brother’s vein, clamping a piece of gauze from the side table over the top.

“Maybe that’ll make you feel better, Scotty,” he murmurs, and thumbs his brother’s arm, holding the gauze down tight. “I don’t know what I can do for you.” The contact is so soothing, so affirming, in a strange way. Like drifting again. “I wish you’d let me keep it, whatever it was. If it’s about what you are, I would have come for you. I’d have been here to bring you back to me, the second I learned about your kind. Or we could have...”

But he stops, because Scott shifts a bit, hand creeping forward. “Le?” he asks weakly.

It cuts Herc to the core, the way Scott says it. Like he never thought he’d say it again. Eyes stinging, Herc scoots closer, touching his brother’s hair. It feels brittle, tired. “Yeah, Scotty, I’m here.”

Scott huffs out, a sound that could have been a laugh. “Come to watch me suffer?”

“Chuck said you were in a bad way,” Herc says gently. “He wasn’t exaggerating.”

“Give me... a, a day or... or two. Be fine.”

“Baby, you’re dying.” There’s no response, and Herc sighs. “Scott, look at me. Can you do that, can you look at me?”

It takes a few moments, but his brother’s sea-green eyes finally open, clouded with pain. “You... should go.”

“Why?”

“What I did...”

“I don’t know what you did. Can you tell me? What were you covering up?” Herc asks, more than a little desperate now. “Help me understand this, Scott. Why’d this happen? Why’d we leave each other?”

Scott shakes his head, slow, painful. “I just wanted you to forget. I didn’t want you... want you hurting...”

“Hurting over what?”

There’s no answer for a little while, and then, as if summoning the last of his strength, Scott pushes himself up, hand reaching out for Herc’s henley, and Herc allows himself to be pulled in. A little _you can remember if you want_ is whispered against his cheek, and then Scott’s kissing him.

His brother is kissing him.

And everything comes flooding back.

Everything.

Dad’s beatings and kissing girls in high school and playing rugby out at the park with his brother and his friends and feeling warm whenever he collided with somebody, but never arousal, not then and not yet. The desperation in Scott’s voice when he phoned from the shelter and that same fear mimicked again on the nights when Scott snuggled a little too close to him in the bed they shared. The moment he met Angie, something perfect, electric, in her laugh, and the disappointment that he could never quite seem to introduce Scott to her. 

There’s Chuck being born and Chuck growing up and the morning Scott finally showed up and seemed to know exactly how to make the little boy laugh, despite the fact they’d never met before, Scott’s toys coming in the mail and Angie picking up the packages before Herc had a chance to read the postage labels, and Angie throwing him to the bed, _hungry_ , the day he comes back from his last deployment. 

And there’s Chuck. Struggling with Chuck, trying to move past the memories of sex with Angela, that connection they had, the way she tasted and how she shivered against him. Asking Yancy to... Yancy forcing him to remember it wrong, remember it the way he needed to, so he could...

_...you’re watching him with soft eyes, marveling a little at how exposed he is right now, stripped down to the thing he always pretends he isn’t, a boy desperately wishing somebody would love him, and you know he feels guilty about something, something important, but he doesn’t need to. You know that - you love him..._

_... Angela always did love going for a morning run, but today you find her sitting at the kitchen table in her trainers, coffee dripping slowly into the old carafe, and she holds out a hand for you when she sees you. She looks troubled, but when you ask her what’s wrong, she just shakes her head and says I love you, Herc, you know I love you, I’d do anything for you, don’t you..._

_Scotty’s been out all weekend and you should lecture him about it, except you don’t, and he hugs you, head tucked into the crook of your chin, handing slipping south, saying, I’m sorry ‘Le, don’t..._

_...you’re standing with Scott in front of the Pons for the first time and he looks at you and says promise me you won’t hate me for this and you tell him nothing he does could make you hate him and he grins like..._

_...your knuckles are bloody and you can’t stop hitting him, because you don’t understand, you don’t understand this, and you can feel every blow yourself and he doesn’t even try to stop you. And you’re glad for that, because the first thing you wondered when you saw it in the drift is why didn’t you ask me, I’d have given you anything, I loved you, I love..._

_...can’t magic love into existence... can’t break what’s true..._

_...yes, ‘Le, yes, of course I’ll marry you..._

_...hate me if you need to..._

_...just accept you’re gay, and..._

Herc rocks back, nearly falling over under the force of decades, decades of...

“It’s okay, Daddy,” he hears in his ear, body slumping into a set of strong, oh-so-familiar arms. “I’ve got you.”

Herc closes his eyes for a moment, trying to gather himself. What happened? What really happened with Chuck? He loved him, wanted to be there for him, but couldn’t get over... and he starts laughing, relief rushing in over the still-churning chaos of his memory, mind trying to recover from decades of his brother’s unformed magic, and Yancy’s surgical extractions.

“Daddy?” Chuck asks.

But Herc just turns, pulling Chuck’s beautiful face up for a kiss, caressing his cheek as he breaks away again. “Yancy was right, wasn’t he? It’s all just bullshit. Everything, it was just bullshit.” 

Chuck, however, doesn’t seem to appreciate the revelation banging around in Herc’s skull right now - this wonderful thought that it’s never really been about the contents of his lover’s pants but the warmth of their heart. Nope, his brat spawn doesn’t appreciate it at all, because he punches Herc again. “Mum’s dying here, you arsehole! It ain’t funny!”

Herc doesn’t ever want to stop laughing, it feel so goddamn good to be free of this all, but he can practically taste Scott’s trepidation. And fear. And pain.

It’s sobering.

“We’re gonna try something, baby,” he murmurs, stroking his brother’s lank hair for a moment, and then hits down on the switch that raises and lowers the bed. “Can you come a little closer to the edge for me?”

Scotts eyes him warily as the bed sinks. “Why?”

Satisfied with the height - crotch level, fucking perfect - Herc unzips his fly and steps forward. Close enough for Scott to take him in. Chuck steps forward, horns out as he rubs his cheek into the back of Herc’s shoulder, spit-slick hand coming around to lightly squeeze the base of his cock. 

“We’re gonna see how many times our boy here can make me come for you.”

Five, it turns out. The last two dry.

And sure, Herc has to send Chuck out of the room in search of some fucking Vaseline to deal with the aftermath of that, but it’s worth it to see Scott’s horns shed their burnt exterior, the skin of his wings go soft and downy again with new feather growth, watch his tail unfurl back across the sheets.

Scott, however, looks at the tail in dismay. “Is this mine?” he asks in disbelief, the thing flexing a little as if in response.

“Yeah,” Herc replies from the chair, chafed cock stinging a bit in the open air, petting Scott’s cheek with the back of his knuckles. It should be strange, this whole thing, but but fuck it. However damaged their connections might be, Scott is still his co-pilot, his brother, his mate... his wife. If Herc wants to touch, he’s going to touch. “Seems to be standard-issue for an incubus.”

“Sounds insane.”

Herc frowns. He can’t feel Scott’s emotions again yet, not like he can with Chuck or even Raleigh, but he’s still the big brother here. He can tell when something’s up. “Wait, you didn’t know?”

Scowling, Scott pulls the heating blanket back up, to his ribs. His wings are a kind of inky gray, feathers opening like new leaves, filling out. “What, like that’s a normal assumption for a bloke to make about himself?”

“So, what? Yancy said something?”

“You’re fucking them, aren’t you?” It’s an accusation, and it stings like one. “Those Beckets.”

“Yeah,” Herc replies honestly, leaning forward a bit. “Got Raleigh knocked up and everything. Gonna be a new little Hansen in the world. So you gotta make nice with him. I’m sure he’d love to pick your brains about all that mothering stuff.”

Scott sniffs, both more and less pleased. “You... you got all that?”

“You made her so you could be with me,” Herc nods back, and sighs. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Scotty. I’m sorry I wasn’t... that I couldn’t... that you had to do that.”

“Well, we wouldn’t have Charlie if we hadn’t been a couple of fucking idiots, would we know?” Scott pats his hand. He’s still weak, Herc can feel it, his fingers lacking any kind of grip strength. It’s going to take a lot to get his brother back to full health. But that’s sex Herc is more than willing to have. 

“Yeah,” he smiles. “You have to see him in action, Scott. He’s such a perfect little cock slut for...”

But his smile that falls, the second Scott curls up tighter in the blankets, moving away from Herc’s touch. “Don’t talk about my boy like that,” he mutters, sounding more like his old self than any other moment yet. “He’s not like that.”

“He is, Scotty. He’s just like you.” Scott whines a little, and Herc reaches back out for him. “I thought, we all thought, that it was because Raleigh bit him. But he’s just like his mum, isn’t he?”

“He’s a good boy...”

“Of course he’s good. He’s perfect. Chuck, our boy, he’s so perfect,” Herc tells him. On a certain level, it’s fucking insane that Scott is actually Angela. On another - one Scott probably isn’t ready to acknowledge himself, and Herc knows he can’t vocalize - it’s kind of hot. But either way, he’s grateful. He’s so, so grateful. “You made him so perfect. Such a pretty boy. Doesn’t get his good looks from me, that’s for damn sure.”

“So you fuck him though?”

“It’s what he needs,” Herc says. “It’s what you need. There’s no shame in it.”

Scott shrugs, obviously unconvinced. 

_Like you didn’t just suck a liter of cum out of me,_ Herc thinks, but doesn’t say it. Scott’s already been pushed to the breaking point here today, but he’s going to live, they’re going to be okay, everything is the way it’s supposed to be. Time enough for more discussion later, he figures.

Herc pulls a deck of playing cards out of one of his cargo pockets. “Poker?” he asks, tapping the deck out.

Scott pretends to think about it. “Sure. But deal a hand up for Charlie too, yeah? Can’t take him that much longer to find your dick some goddamn lotion.”

Herc grins. “Gonna have to touch you how to pull in your teeth a little better.”

“Maybe I like it a little rough.”

“Oh, honey, you are in no shape to be issuing that kind of challenge.”

“Fuck you, old man. Get that chapped dick of yours up here. I’ll show you a challenge.”

Six.

Turns out Herc’s limit is actually six orgasms in a thirty minute period. And yeah, it kind of hurts. But he’s more than happy to do it.

He’s got his family back.


	7. Chapter 7

Yancy’s resigned to what he’s going to find, when they let him out of solitary.

Empty bunk. Empty cell. Bed stripped down. Not a single personal item in sight.

No Scott.

Not even his scent.

Three days without a shower, one stolen orgasm through the food slot, and Yancy feels gross, hungry, completely defeated. He figures there’s nothing he can do at the moment about Scott - it’s an hour until Taps, no way to call his lawyer and find out what’s happened - so he grabs his towel and toiletry kit instead and heads for the showers. 

Food is calling.

Just his luck though; nobody’s here. 

Yancy’s never liked being alone. Mom used to say that it was an incubus thing, not wanting to be alone, but it’s always felt more personal to him. Something that’s just him. Not just about food or the comfort of another warm body, like Mom tried to tell him it was. He always had Raleigh, until he didn’t, and when he got the kid back, it was like regaining the missing piece of his soul. They haven’t spent this much time apart from each other since those last few awful years after Yancy changed but before Raleigh did, and...

He stops himself from going down that road, concentrating very intently on shampooing his regulation-short hair. Yancy put a lot of thought into this over the past few days, sitting alone in all that silence, and maybe Mom was right. Maybe he needs to stop trying to be something he’s not. Be a bit more of an incubus, a bit less of... well, not human, but an incubus pining away for something more than an easy meal. There’s no point, wishing for things he can’t have. Every time he’s tried to do the right thing by a human, for a human - Richard, Raleigh, before the change, that fishing boat, Herc - it’s just ended badly.

Oh yes. Yancy felt the moment his magic snapped. A few nights ago. Herc tore it clean apart, like it was nothing. Like Herc hadn’t all but begged for it, wanting to be gay so he could love his Chuck the way Chuck needed. Like it was meaningless. The best spellwork Yancy was capable of and it didn’t mean a damn thing in the end. 

The sensation of _tearing_ had nearly given him a heart attack. 

As had the realization that he’d just lost Herc. That Herc had just thrown the fix away, that he’d remember, that he’d known it was Yancy who did it...

Yancy tilts his head back into the water, resolving His family’s not here, he doesn’t really have a family - no way, not anymore, not after that - and that’s just how it is.

Scott, though... Yancy is terribly worried about Scott. He’s worried about Chuck and Raleigh too, of course, but mostly, it’s Scott’s fate that’s been haunting him. It might hurt him, a little, to lose his new daddy, but Herc was Scott’s _mate_. 

If Herc rejected that magic, if he rejected what that magic was intended to do for him, if he welcomed his old memories back...

But Yancy doesn’t want to think about Scott dying, any more than he wants to think about any of the alternatives, like Scott and Chuck and Herc ending up like his own parents. Really, he’s not sure which is a worse fate. And that’s not even taking into consideration his baby brother, who’s so in love and so pregnant and so...

As good as it feels to be naked and warm for the first time in three days, the shower doesn’t seem so appealing anymore. 

Instead, Yancy turns off the tap, bracing himself for a moment on the shower wall, trying to breathe through the panic - the rage - that hits him when he thinks about Raleigh.

Herc... Herc promised to take care of him.

Herc _promised_.

Yancy doesn’t go back to his cell. At least, he doesn’t stay there. One of the guards wanders by at just the right time, and the ex-pilot doesn’t let it go to waste. Using the strongest influence he can, he whammies the guy, strips him, tucks him into bed, and slips out again, just before Taps sounds. Wearing the guard’s uniform - and face, and ID badge - Yancy’s able to stroll out of the secure area without a single hiccup.

It does take him a bit longer to unlock the guard’s locker, with its set of ratty civilian clothes. Not to mention locate the guard’s car. Or the nearest off-base Walmart, where they mercifully sell burner phones. 

He only hopes the kid hasn’t gotten a local Australian number yet.

+++++

Raleigh’s just leaving the gym, when his phone buzzes.

He frowns, looking at the number. The fuck? It’s an American number, he can tell, but other than that, he doesn’t recognize it.

Probably another goddamn reporter, he figures, and refuses the call.

He’s halfway back to his quarters, when it rings again.

Same number.

“Motherfucker,” Raleigh mutters.

It’s been a hard couple of days, with Daddy and Chuck gone. He knows why they left - Chuck was in a near panic, when he heard about Scott, and Daddy’s strange indifference to the whole thing had only made that worse for the kid. Makes sense now, looking back, knowing what they all know. Scott accidentally whammied Daddy, made him forget, made him _hate_ rather than remember something horrible. Not that Raleigh understands, really, why it’s so horrible to learn that your brother is in love with you and wants to make love to you, but apparently, Daddy had found it horrifying. 

_At the time,_ Raleigh reminds himself, repeating the same words Daddy had used with him on the call a few days ago. 

“I didn’t understand then, but I do now,” Daddy had told him. “That’s why I need to stay here for a few more days, baby, until I can figure this mess out. Find a way to bring Scotty home. So don’t cry, eh? I’ll be there with you again soon.”

“Okay, Daddy. I love you.”

“Love you too. Hug the sprog for me.”

Raleigh touches his belly, feeling warm again, just at the thought of Daddy’s words to their unborn baby. “Daddy loves you too,” he murmurs, and yawns. He got breakfast at the gym, spoke to Major Heller already, and there’s no need to go back out again for a while if he doesn’t want to. And he doesn’t want to.

He just wants to go back to bed, and pretend like Yancy’s still here.

It’s about bedtime for his big brother, isn’t it?

Major Heller said that Yancy was due out of solitary that evening, _and you’ll be able to talk to him tomorrow if you’d like, I can get something set up for you._ There are plenty of other things Raleigh would like Major Heller to set up for him, but for the moment, a phone call would be good. It sucks it’s too late in Hawaii to get ahold of him now, but Raleigh’s more than happy to curl up in the family nest and indulge in their lingering ghost drift.

Yancy hasn’t quite opened fully, but then, he’s always been a little guarded. Raleigh’s optimistic that once Yancy realizes that Daddy’s _their_ daddy, he’ll loosen up a bit. Let go some of that tightly-wound control freak personality of his. It’s annoying, too, being his big brother’s obligation all the time. Raleigh wants it to just be them again, like when they were boys and they could just be together, no worries or responsibilities.

But time enough to worry about that shit later.

Leaving his sweaty work-out gear behind on the living space floor, Raleigh sinks gratefully into the softness of their nest. Daddy had the maintenance guys knock out a wall between his and Chuck’s original quarters and one just next door. Means they have two bathrooms now, which is nice, because they can allocate one just for Daddy and all that messy human business, and three bedrooms, one of which is now a study space for Chuck, the other slated to become a nursery for the baby.

And, of course, Daddy and Chuck’s old bedroom is now a wall to wall sleeping space. One that Daddy has given Raleigh free reign to decorate. One that’s turning out quite nicely, if Raleigh does say so himself.

But the best part is the smell. The scent of Daddy’s sex, practically burnt into the sheets.

Raleigh wraps himself up in it, cuddling into the blankets, and closes his eyes.

Pushes out.

Looking for Yancy.

 _Hey bro,_ he tries.

The phone buzzes again. Almost immediately. Accompanied by the image of Yancy’s clever, yummy fingers tapping the wheel of some shitty pre-war Toyota Corolla, getting angrier and angrier by the second.

Frowning, Raleigh peels himself out of bed again.

Catches the thing on the ninth ring.

“About time, holy fuck Rals, are you okay?”

It’s Yancy. Which is weird, because Yancy is supposed to be in jail right now, and it’s lights-out by this point - something Raleigh confirms, glancing at the cheap clock they’ve set up next to the TV, _Yancy Time_ taped to the front. “Yeah, I’m, uhh, I’m fine, Yance. What’s... going on?”

“Oh, fuck, kiddo, I was getting really worried. Are you okay?”

“Sure,” Raleigh replies, and pads back to the nest. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

There’s dead silence on the other end. “Did something happen, while I was in solitary?”

“Yeah, how was that? You able to eat and everything? Where are you right now, anyway.”

“Boring as fuck. Guards came by. Stole another one’s uniform tonight to sneak out. Wasn’t a problem. I’ll be back by reveille tomorrow. But fuck that. Did anything happen for you?”

Raleigh chews the inside of his cheek. “Umm... no, not really?”

“Goddammit Raleigh, what’s going on with Scott?”

Oh. That makes sense. Yancy would know about that, wouldn’t he? Fuck, of course he would. They were rooming together. Raleigh relaxes a bit, rolling into the spot where Daddy usually sleeps. The scent is the best here. And he’s going to enjoy it, for as long as he can. “He’s fine.”

More silence. “Fine?”

“Yeah, he’s fine. Daddy and Chuck went out to see him.”

“He’s still alive? Where?”

“The, uhh, the Navy hospital at Pearl Harbor, I think. He’s still on the installation at Pearl Harbor somewhere, anyway. Chuck wasn’t real sure.”

“How can he... never mind. What happened?”

“Like, Daddy went out and took care of him.” Raleigh sighs a bit; sure, it took a lot of effort to get Daddy out the door, but that resistance was all magic-induced. Once Scott broke the spell, of course Daddy made sure his mate was eating properly. As if Daddy would do anything else. “Daddy’s still there. Scott’s been signed out to medical until he recovers fully.”

“Is he still... starving?”

“Daddy said this morning that the worst is past. His, umm, his wings grew back,” Raleigh replies, scrounging his mind for details. He was still half-asleep when Daddy called this morning. “I didn’t really understand that.”

“Yeah, Scott got that old Lucky Seven logo tattooed on his shoulders, probably trying to cover up the mating mark he got as Angela. I don’t really know how, but it seems to have permanently altered his wings. He’s got, like, these little angel wings. With feathers.”

“Why would an incubus want angel wings?”

“I don’t know, angels are supposed to be dicks.” For a moment, it sounds like Yancy. Happy, carefree Yancy. Then he goes back to being all broody and pissy. “Do you have any idea what’s going on with all that?”

“What, with Daddy?”

“Yeah, with Herc.”

Raleigh huffs. Weren’t they past this denial shit with Yancy by now? “ _Daddy_ is fine.”

“Are you sure? Are you sure Scott or Chuck aren’t just forcing him...”

“Dude, what? What’s your goddamn problem?”

That seems to stop it. “Huh?”

“Daddy is fine. Scott told him to forget some things, so he did, but apparently he broke the seal on those memories and Daddy could remember everything again and he’s fine.” There’s no response. Raleigh sighs again. “Yancy, everything’s okay.”

“Everything? Fucking hell... are... are you forgetting that I altered basically every sex memory Herc has? And that’s why he wants us? Because he remembers himself as gay?”

“Daddy still wants us,” Raleigh tells his big brother as patiently as he can - fuck, he loves Yancy, but Yancy can be a real idiot sometimes. “Yeah, he knows what you did, whatever, he said so. But Yance, you didn’t make him love us.”

“Raleigh...”

“He loves us,” Raleigh insists, because this is the truth and Yancy needs to see it. “He loves us, and he told me he doesn’t need to see himself as gay or straight or anything else for that to be true. He’s there with Scott because he wants to be, and he’s staying with us because he wants to, and everything’s _fine_. He said he doesn’t need the memories anymore.”

“... are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Raleigh says, and touches his belly again, swallowing. “Wouldn’t I... wouldn’t I lose the baby otherwise?”

“That’s a myth. You can’t lose a pregnancy cause the human loses interest,” Yancy replies almost instantly. “Don’t even think about that.”

“I don’t need to worry about it,” Raleigh says with a little smirk, snuggling deeper into the bed. “Cause Daddy loves me.”

Yancy laughs, and that’s better, that’s much better. “Oh Raleigh, what am I gonna do with you?”

“Come home and screw me senseless?” Raleigh suggests, maybe begging a little. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too. This place is almost too easy. Almost as good as the strip club was, for hunting.”

Raleigh smiles, chuckling a little, and then thinks of something else. “Hey, why isn’t Daddy an incubus? I mean, if Scott could shift and everything, doesn’t that mean he was born, not turned?”

“I think so. I don’t know, but it’s probably something as simple as Grandma Hansen having an affair with an incubus.” Yancy’s probably shrugging. That’s his shrug voice. “Sounds like their dad was kind of an asshole. Could make sense.”

“Could,” Raleigh echoes, and then bites his lip again. “Hey Yance? Can I tell you something?”

“Sure, kiddo. Anything.”

“I’m thinking about getting moved back to where you are. Until the trial.”

“Wait, what? No, Raleigh, no, you can’t do that.”

“But Daddy can’t leave Scott, and while he says Scott’s convalescence is covering things for now, he’s not sure how long it’s going to take to fix the situation. Get him pardoned, you know? Probably can’t happen while our thing is going on.”

“You can’t come here, you just can’t. It’s prison, it’s really not fun.”

“But you’re there,” Raleigh pleads. “You’re there, and I’m all alone, and... I miss you. Don’t you miss me?”

Yancy sighs into the receiver. “Babe, of course I miss you.”

“Good. I’ll talk to Major Heller about it tomorrow.”

“Wait, Rals...”

“Love you, bro,” Raleigh chirps, pleased with himself, and hangs up, just to make sure he really wins the argument. He grins a little at the thought of Yancy cursing him out in some parking lot in Oahu, and then sighs a little more, realizing Yancy did kind of break out of jail and hopefully, nobody will notice.

But regardless - Yancy will be okay, he’s a master when it comes to fucking with humans - Raleigh’s here now, safe in Daddy’s bed, bathed in Daddy’s scent, and rubs his face into the pillows that smell so much like Daddy.

All they need to do is get through the next few weeks, win the trial, get Scott pardoned, and they’ll all be home together again. All of them. The whole family.

And considering what Daddy said about Scott being Chuck’s mother...

Well.

That would be pretty fucking awesome too, having a mom again. Not that anybody could replace _their_ mother, not at all, but... it would be nice to have somebody to talk to about all this weird pregnancy shit.

+++++

Yancy stares at the burner phone for a moment, before getting out of the car with a groan and heading over to the edge of the cliff he's parked at. Those famous north coast waves are quiet tonight, the ocean smooth and calm beyond him, and he stares out at the horizon long after he launches the phone out into it.

Raleigh. 

Fuck, that kid never seems to understand the concept of something going wrong. Doesn't seem to comprehend the possibility that Chuck's manipulating Herc. That transferring to lock-up could be a massive problem. Nope. Nothing wrong here. Everything's going to be perfect because Raleigh Becket wants it to be and dammit Yancy, why don't you just understand that?

It's irritating as fuck sometimes.

But then, that exasperated optimism of his is exactly one of the things Yancy loves about him the most, so.

"Just go by the hospital," Yancy mutters to himself. "Answer it for yourself."

It's a good idea. Plus, he'll need to go back to lock-up at some point, sneak in at reveille, maybe. So he's got time to go to the hospital. 

And sit here for a little while longer, watching the ocean.

Right now, it's far more predictable than what the only remaining human in the Hansen family is.


	8. Chapter 8

Chuck curls closer to Mum, trying to keep himself from falling out of the narrow hospital bed. The rails help with that, of course, but it does mean that they’re squished in tight. Right where Daddy left them, after another late night snack for Mum.

It’s perfect, as far as Chuck is concerned. Life’s perfect.

“Whatcha thinking about, kiddo?” his mum asks - and sure, it’s a little weird to think about Uncle Scott as Mum, but at the same time, it’s pretty goddamn good, too.

“Nothing,” Chuck replies softly, and kisses the closest patch of skin he can, turning into Mum’s earthy, slightly sweet, scent. “Glad you’re not dead.”

Mum chuckles. “I’m glad I’m not dead too,” he says lightly, and then his fingers find Chuck’s hair and Chuck practically purrs at the contact. He’s already naked, in bed, all comfy-warm, belly full of Daddy’s love from earlier, tucked in next to somebody - two somebodies, really - he loves dearly and thought he’d lost forever. Being touched just makes it all that much better. “Bit odd, that.”

“What, not being dead?” Chuck asks, and pushes up, enough so he can look the other incubus in the eye. “Why’s that odd?”

“I’m the one who told you she was gone,” Mum says seriously, still stroking Chuck’s hair. “That was my choice, and I shouldn’t... I regret not going a different way. Should have been your Uncle Scott who died that day, not your Mum.”

Biting his lip, Chuck thinks about that for a moment. What it would have been like, losing his uncle instead of his mum, having Mum wear that female form instead of his natural male, having her go to Jaeger Academy instead of Uncle Scott, and...

“Daddy wouldn’t have gone,” Chuck says quietly.

“Huh?”

“Daddy. He wouldn’t have asked Mum, his wife, to be a pilot.”

Mum cradles Chuck’s face. “I’m the one who suggested we go. Angela would have said the same thing.”

“Yeah, but Daddy wouldn’t have gone,” Chuck insists. “He would never have wanted to put her in harm’s way like that. You guys never would have piloted Lucky, and we wouldn’t have Striker now, and we’d all be sitting helpless somewhere watching this bullshit go down while you were still wearing your boobs and Uncle Scott was gone!”

“Fuck,” Mum mutters, falling back on his back. “Is it just me, or is this really fucked up?”

“What?”

“Me, this, our... your uncle or your mum or Le’s wife or mate or brother or whatever the fuck I am, I don’t know,” Mum says, and waves a hand down his body. “Hell, shouldn’t it feel weird that we’re doing this?”

“Snuggling?” Chuck asks, almost offended by the comment. “Why? It’s my favorite thing.”

“Wasn’t when you were a sprog.”

“Couldn’t have sex when I was a sprog.”

“Shouldn’t be having sex with you now.”

Chuck rolls his eyes and dips his head, ghosting his tongue across Mum’s nipple. Mum’s been impossible about this, giving into things only very slowly. But Daddy was the same way, so Chuck feels like he’s got some experience breaking in a reluctant parent. Asking sweetly seems to do wonders. As does just stripping naked and doing what he wants to do in the sexiest way possible (even though everything he does is already done in the sexiest way possible; he’s a goddamn incubus, isn’t he?). 

And just like Daddy, Mum’s folding at every turn. 

Because he wants it too.

What went wrong with Uncle Scott’s changing, Chuck doesn’t rightly know. Mum and Daddy talked about it privately, after Mum recovered enough from that prolonged starvation enough to have a conversation about this stuff. Whatever it was, though, it seems to have deeply scarred him. Wasn’t even aware of what he was, until Yancy told him. He’s carrying a lifetime of guilt with him; stupid guilt, but guilt nonetheless and it has to be respected. According to Daddy, anyway.

Chuck thinks it’s all ridiculous. They’re incubi and they’re both Daddy’s mates and there’s nothing to feel guilty about at all. If anybody should feel guilt, it should be Daddy, beating Uncle Scott to a pulp rather than try to understand what he saw in the drift, nearly killing him by having him locked up, far away from his family, and then being a right wanker about coming here to save him. 

And yeah, sure, there was magic and more magic and so many layers of altered memories Chuck’s surprised anything in Daddy’s head was straight, but that’s all been fixed now. Mum’s still got to go back to prison, though, unless Daddy can get Marshall Pentecost to grant a pardon, which Daddy says is going to be an uphill battle. The Marshall apparently had to pull a massive number of favors to get Mum out of the conn-pod; there’d been no hard evidence of a rape, and both Hansen men were rated universally compatible. The brass had wanted to just move Mum to a different partner. He’s only here, in prison, because of Daddy and Pentecost.

Daddy says he’s working on it, but right now, they’re just relying on the medical stay to keep them together. Chuck’s already suggested that Mum just shift back into his human form and go home with them, but Mum says that’ll just cause more legal problems later on.

Stupid humans and their stupid rules.

But all that can wait. For now, there’s sex and cuddles to be had, and Chuck’s determined to enjoy that. 

Mum’s back. His mum’s really back.

“Yancy says incubi aren’t supposed to feel guilty,” Chuck tells Mum now, “not about anything.”

Mum chuckles again, and kisses Chuck’s cheek. “Would you believe it if I said I’m starting to feel guilty about not feeling guilty?”

“I’d say that’s a fucking good start.”

“Picked up your dad’s foul mouth, I can see.”

“Like you didn’t swear around me all the time.”

“That was your uncle talking,” Mum says, and kisses him again. “Your mother has an entirely different opinion on the subject.”

Chuck smiles a little to himself, sliding his hands up Mum’s body, taking in the differences between him and Daddy. Mum is a little taller, and much thinner, muscle tone almost completely gone, fewer tattoos than Daddy has, but the strength is the same. As is the love Chuck feels, radiating out from deep down. Yancy said nobody loves like humans love, but Mum’s feelings for his baby boy are almost as clear and as strong as Daddy’s are. Having both of them... well, he’s tempted to think that it’s almost too much to handle, but it’s not, or that he doesn’t deserve it, but of course he does. 

“Can I see ‘em?” Chuck asks.

Mum sighs. His fingers haven’t left Chuck’s body this whole time, but they pull back a little now. “Charlie, baby...”

“Please?” he repeats, sweet as he can, and smiles his best _please fuck me now_ smile. “I like seeing you like you are.”

Mum rolls his eyes, but those horns still corkscrew out of his forehead. They look so much better now. Mum’s tail still has a long way to go in regenerating, though, and his feathers on his wings still haven’t fully grown back in. Daddy’s been nursing Mum every few hours for the past two days. Seems to be working. Mum’s still weak - too weak to push Chuck out of bed, which is really quite lovely and helpful - and has a long way to go to being healthy again, but it’s a good start. And he isn’t in danger of dying anymore, according to the befuddled doctor, which is a very good thing indeed.

So everything’s perfect. Almost perfect. If Raleigh and Yancy were here, and Daddy back from getting his coffee, and them all in some beach house, listening to the waves of a kaijuu-free ocean, instead of laying in a too-small bed in a stinking military hospital... yeah, that’d be perfect.

Maybe someday.

“Happy now?” Mum asks.

Chuck licks up the tip of one of those horns, savoring the way Mum shivers in return. Oh, they’re going to have so much fun once they get home to Oz. “Yeah, I’m very happy, Mum. Love you.”

“Yeah, yeah, I bet you are,” Mum grumbles without any real heat. “I’d kill for a cigarette right now.”

Chuck chuckles, and lays his cheek in the crook of Mum’s shoulder. “I really do love you, Mum.”

“I know, baby. I love you too.”

+++++

Herc isn’t sure what the hell to say, when he finds Yancy in the hospital waiting room.

Well, it’s not _the_ waiting room, like there’s only one, singular, in the building. This place is a rabbit warren, sections - ranging in size from rooms to wings - added, remodeled, or absorbed from neighboring structures whenever the base had funds. The main building is where they’re keeping Scott, and there are like six different rooms on their floor alone.

The one Yancy is sitting in isn’t anywhere near where Scott is.

He looks up when Herc stops to stare, almost spilling coffee all over his hand in the process. A few drips do get loose from the sippy cup lid, and Herc pulls it up to his lips to lick the stray droplets off. 

It’s way past midnight. He probably shouldn’t be drinking coffee, but Chuck and Scott needed some alone time. Very important. For Herc, getting his mate back has been a relief to a burden he didn’t even know he was carrying, but for them? His poor little brother has no idea what to do with himself, and Chuck is so excited his mum is still alive that he hasn’t really thought about how their very different family dynamic is affecting Scott.

They’ll figure it out.

Herc’s sure of that.

But as for this...

“Son,” he says carefully - because Yancy is moody on his best days, and he is supposed to be in _prison_ right now - “wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

Yancy twists around, looking somewhat guilty, but beyond that, Herc can practically feel the anxiety pouring off the boy. “Oh. Dad. Hey, umm... I, uhh, wanted to...”

Herc cuts him off with a wave of his hand, sitting down next to him on the cheap vinyl sofa that passes for furniture in this place. “You wanted to see Scott? Or us?” he asks softly, hopefully, and lays a hand on Yancy’s knee. The boy’s blue eyes follow it down. Definitely anxious now. Definitely. “Yancy?”

“I felt it snap,” Yancy says quietly. “Everything... what I did. Felt it snap.”

Oh. That. Herc relaxes a bit, smiling. “Yeah. Scott, he... I’m not sure how much he told you.”

Yancy takes it for the prompt it is, even if he doesn’t look Herc in the eye when he answers. “He didn’t tell me much, but it was pretty obvious.”

Herc sighs, sensing that Yancy is holding back, and squeezes his thigh. “He’s Chuck’s mum and my mate. He hid the memories off all the times when he fed from me when he wasn’t Angela after the court martial. What you felt breaking, he was trying to release what he hid, but he’s not nearly as good at it as you.” Yancy’s shoulders tighten, and Herc lays an arm around them, hugging his boy closer. “Yancy, I _know_ , it’s okay.”

“You begged me, Dad, you wanted a way to be comfortable with Chuck...”

“... and you changing my memories like that gave me the space to realize how good it can be. Gave me the room to love you,” Herc reassures him, and Yancy takes a deep, shuddering breath. The boy turns into his shoulder, and Herc realizes what the trouble must be. “Oh, babe, did you think I wouldn’t love you anymore?”

“I...”

And there are a few things Herc could say. Like how love can’t be magicked out of thin air. But Herc’s really not sure how to have that conversation again, considering that Yancy took the memory of it last time - and they will have to have a discussion about that, but not right now.

Instead, he just pulls his son to his feet. “Come on, love. Let’s go see the family, then get you back before reveille. Can’t have you escaping now. Need you to win that trial and come home to us all, okay? Raleigh’s dying to see you.”

Yancy leans on him, clearly starving for contact, and Herc’s blood boils at the thought of his sweet blue-eyed boy languishing in solitary. “Yeah, so, uhh, about Raleigh.”


End file.
